For A Heartier Potato Salad, Try Making It Russian-Style

Russian-style potato salad, also called Olivier (pronounced and sometimes spelled "Olivye") salad, is filled with ingredients that give the recipe a stick-to-your-ribs quality from the first bite. The salad calls for a range of hearty, finely diced ingredients: fall root vegetables like boiled potatoes and carrots, hard-boiled eggs, ham (or another meat of your choice), succulent dill pickles, canned peas, creamy mayonnaise, and sometimes fresh dill, mustard, salt, and pepper to taste. The dish was originally served at the Hermitage, a restaurant in Moscow, Russia, in the 1860s. Named after Lucien Olivier, the chef who created it, Russian potato salad is served around the world on special occasions like birthdays or New Year's Eve.

Although people do eat the salad cold, it's also perfectly acceptable to eat it at room temperature or while the salad's stuffings are still slightly warm. Like most potato salads, it makes for an excellent sidekick at meals where hamburgers, hot dogs, pork chops, and other proteins are present. That said, with healthy servings of both eggs and ham or other meats, it's a meal in its own right, too.

Getting the right kind of potatoes for this salad makes all the difference once it's time to put it together. Starchy potatoes like Idaho or Russet potatoes turn mushy easily. This makes them an apt choice for mashed potato recipes rather than for potato salad recipes like this. Waxy potatoes like red or new potatoes work better in Russian potato salad. Those potatoes are known to hold their shape when boiled, leaving you with less mashed potatoes and more firm, small potato pieces in your salad.

Additionally, while ham is typically the meat of choice for this dish, sausage, boiled chicken, and even hot dogs taste great in it, too. However, if you're making this salad for a mixed crowd of meat eaters and vegetarians, leave out the meat. Because it's filled with so many other goodies, it's just as good on its own without the extra protein, so no one will leave the table hungry after eating a veg-friendly version of this potato salad.

Finally, feel free to experiment with additional ingredients in this potato salad to add more flavor or alter the texture of the dish in some way. For example, a dash of white wine perks up the rest of the flavors by freeing the flavor molecules in the food and breaking down fats. On the other hand, sour cream or Greek yogurt not only ups the tanginess levels in the salad, it also evens out the texture, making this absurdly good potato salad satisfyingly smooth as each bite trips over your taste buds.