Why It's Safe And Preferred To Eat German Potato Salad At Room Temperature

If you love potato salad, you may have been victimized by an overly mayonnaise-d version that not only tastes bland and flavorless, but can't be left sitting out for more than two hours for safety reasons. Luckily, it's safe — and actually preferred — to eat German potato salad at room temperature or above.

German potato salad is everything mayo-based potato salad isn't. It's tangy, savory, and often warm (you can even serve it hot). Thanks to the temperature preference and the lack of mayonnaise, you won't have to keep an eye on the clock at the next get-together. After all, you won't need to get your dish back to the fridge to cool off. The warmth also helps the dressing better soak into the potatoes.

In regular, or American-style, potato salad, mayonnaise is usually used as the binder. Many homemade mayos contain raw eggs, which is why you've got to follow the two-hour rule with refrigeration. Otherwise bacteria can begin to proliferate. You should be especially careful on those hot summer days, when pathogens can grow tenfold in as little as one hour.

It's not just the lack of mayonnaise that makes it safe to serve German potato salad at room temperature. It's the vinegar, too. Its dressing (if Bobby Flay has any say in the matter) is made with bacon and onion cooked in the bacon fat, with some apple cider vinegar and a dash of Dijon mustard mixed in (You may want to skip the bacon if you plan to leave the salad out for a while.) We already know that white vinegar is commonly used as a household cleaner and has antibacterial properties, but does apple cider vinegar carry the same benefits? It turns out that it does.

Apple cider vinegar, far from just a tart substitute for apple juice, has been shown to kill bacteria, including escherichia coli and staphylococcus aureus, as well as some strains of the fungus candida. These particular pathogens most often cause foodborne illness, so adding apple cider vinegar to your dish could have a protective effect. This is thanks to the acetic acid, which makes up about 5 or 6% of most apple cider vinegars on the market. Acetic acid actually slows the growth of certain bacteria and has the ability to infiltrate the cell structures and kill others. So you can rest assured your German potato salad is perfectly safe out at room temperature for a few hours.