How Ina Garten Ensures Her French Potato Salad Has Flavor In Every Bite

A dearth of white wine and a little chicken stock are all that stand between Ina Garten and a supremely delicious bowl of French potato salad. Fortunately, this flavor shortfall is easily remedied. For the Barefoot Contessa, it's just a matter of dressing her potato salad with a bit of both. She puts approximately two tablespoons' worth of each of these ingredients into her spud salad to give it the zip that it deserves. 

Many recipes call for chicken stock, and in the case of Garten's French potato salad, the stock will add that savory umami element that makes food taste so je ne sais quoi. (Pretty appropriate for a French recipe, no?) The addition of white wine to the dish augments the flavors of not only the chicken stock, but in everything else as well. The wine sets the flavor molecules in the different ingredients free. It doesn't change the flavor of ingredients as much as it makes them taste more like themselves, if that makes sense. This is thanks to the acids that the wine grapes have. They make everything taste brighter.

And while Garten doesn't add ingredients like diced chicken to her spud salad, the acidity of the wine white would help if she did. It acts as a tenderizer, breaking down the fats in meat, which is why it's so often used in homemade marinades. If you're cooking along with the Contessa and you typically add chicken, shrimp, and other proteins to your spud salad, that's something to keep in mind.

Eventually, Ina Garten adds ingredients to her potato salad recipe, like olive oil, Dijon mustard, and white wine vinaigrette, plus salt and pepper. However, the white wine and the chicken stock go into the potato salad recipe while the spuds are still hot. 

Once the liquids go into her mixture of red and yellow potatoes, the Barefoot Contessa gives everything a good stir. This coats the spuds and allows the liquids to soak into the depths of them before any other flavorings, like the vinaigrette, have a chance to go to work on the warm potatoes. White wine vinaigrette lends a delicate flavoring to the potatoes. It won't overpower them like a red wine vinaigrette might. 

Finally, Garten makes her own dressing for this dish. However, if your time is limited, go ahead and use a store-bought version. Buy a bottle of your favorite white wine vinaigrette and flavor up your French potato salad with it. That Wishbone Champagne Vinaigrette you've been wanting to try works just fine, too.

Garten uses a dry white wine with this dish. Pretty much any brand will do, including the budget white wine, like the $5 or $10 bottle of wine you get at the local grocery store in your area. It's also possible to use the remainder of that bottle of wine you opened for last night's dinner. As long as the wine is the same color, you can even combine different types of wine to create a more unique flavor.

Finally, if you're experimenting with flavoring potato salad and other dishes with white wine like the Barefoot Contessa does, keep in mind this rule of thumb. If you want to replace something with white wine, make sure the flavors you're replacing are in the spectrum of citrus or vinegar. It can also be used in place of stock if you wish. But in a perfect world, you'll follow Ina Garten's lead and add both white wine and stock to your salad, because why compromise on flavor when you don't have to?