4 Ingredients Make Ree Drummond's Potato Salad Stand Out From The Rest

There are so many ingredients you can add to potato salad. Potatoes are a pretty neutral ingredient that work with a wide range of flavors, which is why there are so many delicious takes on potato salad from around the world. This might be the rationale behind one of "The Pioneer Woman" Ree Drummond's recipes, which flips the script on this classic side dish. This isn't a simple change like swapping out mayo for yogurt – it's a totally out-of-the-box approach Italian-American flavor bomb. — indeed, Drummond's argument for this recipe is that it's a departure from at-times boring, less-flavorful, traditional versions.

Drummond's recipe, which the celebrity chef shared with Us Weekly, centers around four ingredients that you wouldn't see in a "traditional" potato salad: mozzarella, pepperoni, olives, and marinara sauce. That said, she also mixes in some mayo, scallions, and herbs like parsley and basil. The olives are probably the closest you'd get to something from a normal herby, mayo potato salad: Some recipes call for capers, which have a similar briny and tangy quality. At a stretch, you could say that pepperoni echoes the bacon that's a popular potato salad addition. As for the mozzarella, skip the shredded stuff (it's better for hot dishes where it melts) and go for little pearled balls that work better in salads. Drummond only calls for a modest ¾ cup of marinara sauce: After all, you want a dressing, not a gloopy dish so full of sauce that it needs a spoon.

You could say that Ree Drummond's potato salad is a sort of adaptation of other dishes to the milieu of potato salad. It loosely resembles a caprese salad, at least if you squint: Mozzarella and basil are big parts of the classic, as is tomato (although caprese salad calls for fresh tomatoes, not marinara sauce). But olives don't really figure into classic caprese salad (although olive oil does), nor does pepperoni.

Drummond's twist on potato salad also feels like a combination of ingredients that would work neatly with pasta salad — after all, both rely on a starchy carb base. While there's no one famed pasta salad recipe out there that calls for this mix of components, it's a fairly popular combination, though notably, other versions tend to use tomatoes, not marinara sauce. (Drummond may have opted for sauce since potatoes tend to soak up more liquid than pasta.) Perhaps the closest reference point is that Drummond is using elements of classic Italian antipasti plates, which also work well on pasta salad. Again, marinara sauce is the outlier as it's not part of antipasto, although fresh tomatoes might figure in.

It's worth noting that Ree Drummond isn't a one trick pony when it comes to potato salad: She has plenty of other takes on this staple. Although her Italian version aims to counter the boring reputation of potato salad, she does have a traditional recipe on her website, billed as a Fourth of July classic. It features mustard, mayo, scallions, hard-boiled eggs, and bacon.

For something more playful, consider Drummond's hash brown potato salad, which the celebrity chef demonstrated on an episode of "The Pioneer Woman" titled "Lickety-Split." Here, the potatoes are replaced with freezer hash browns, boiled up. Of course, there's nothing stopping you from frying them, but if you want crispy potatoes, you'll have to play it carefully since the other accouterments like mayo, mustard, and sweet pickle relish here may cancel out any crispness. In terms of its extras, it's still closer to the traditional thing, with celery, dill, paprika, and hard-boiled eggs.

Lastly is Drummond's Southern potato salad. It also hews traditional with mayo, celery, scallions, and hard-boiled eggs. However, it gets some twists from apple cider vinegar, adding an acidic kick and sweet pickle relish to cut through the creamier notes. Still, for times when you want to eschew the traditional spud salad, follow in The Pioneer Woman's footsteps and reach for the pepperoni.