Alton Brown’s Cold-Fashioned Potato Salad Is ‘the Best,’ According to Many Food Network Reviewers

Just about everyone has their favorite version of potato salad. It’s practically as much a part of summer picnics as lemonade and ants.

Culinary personality Alton Brown’s Cold-Fashioned Potato Salad was so praised on Food Network’s site, it was dubbed by many reviewers the absolute best version of the dish they’ve ever had. Here’s what sets Brown’s recipe apart from the rest.

Brown’s Cold-Fashioned Potato Salad is packed with textures and flavors

The Good Eats star’s spuds salad features, of course, potatoes (the red kind), cider vinegar, mayonnaise, mustard powder, fresh parsley and tarragon, fresh garlic, cornichons, red onion, and celery.

In his Food Network video, below, for this recipe, Brown chops the potatoes into large chunks and gets them cooking in boiling, salted water. Depending “on how much water is in the pot and how big the potatoes are,” he recommends checking on the potatoes’ doneness five minutes after they start simmering and “every three minutes thereafter.”

He adds that “what you need to watch for especially is cracked skins. If you see any, you know you’ve cooked them too hard or too long.”

Brown puts his potatoes on ice and soaks them in vinegar overnight

Once the potatoes are fork-tender, Brown says to remove them from the hot water and get them into an ice bath. “We’ve got to stop the cooking process,” he explains. “We’re only going to leave this in here for maybe two, three minutes, just to stop the cooking. We want to slice them while they’re warm.”

At this point, the Iron Chef host removes the peels from the potatoes by simply rubbing each potato with a clean tea towel. To cut the potatoes, Brown recommends a hard-boiled egg slicer for uniform pieces.

The warm potato slices are placed into a plastic storage bag along with apple cider vinegar. When the potato is still warm, Brown says, it means “they’re still porous; once they cool down and the starch seals up, they’re not going to be porous anymore.”

In another variation from any other potato salad you’ve probably ever encountered, the chef soaks his potatoes in the vinegar overnight in the fridge.

Brown stirs the dressing ingredients in a bowl. Once the vinegary potatoes are tossed well with the dressing, this potato salad is ready to serve!

Get the complete recipe, video, and reviews on Food Network’s site.

Many reviewers called Brown’s Cold-Fashioned Potato Salad ‘the best’

What with its ice bath, tea towel rub, and overnight vinegar soak, the chef’s spin on potato salad sounds more like a day at the spa than a side dish, but it clearly works, according to many Food Network reviewers who gave it kudos as the best they’ve ever had.

Comments from home cooks on the culinary channel’s site included, “I made this today and it is the best potato salad I have ever tasted,” “This is one of the best potato salad recipes I have ever had. … I promise you won’t be disappointed,” and “it was the BEST potato salad I have ever had, let alone made.”

Summing it up, one reviewer wrote, “This is the best potato salad I’ve ever made. All the seasonings marry so well.”