Duke's Potato Salad
A cropped version of the author photo for Holy Smoke taken on the screened porch at 126 Mallette St.
Dad in all of his regalia with Mom on the front porch of 126 Mallette St. I recall that he had to wear this every year for UNC’s graduation ceremonies which were always super hot and uncomfortable.
Remember when salad bars were all the rage? The best were the ones where you could pile as much as you wanted onto a plate for a flat price. I would go nuts at the Pizza Hut salad bar, a little of this, a little of that, all drowned under a river of ORANGE French dressing. Sometimes we would go to the UNC campus to have lunch with Dad, eating in a cafeteria in some building’s basement. This place charged by weight for their salad bar. I vividly remember Dad yelling after me as I hightailed it to the sneeze guard, “No potato salad!”. It weighed too much. Harsh! He actually had a point and I still don’t get potato salad at a salad bar. That makes it even better when I do have it!
I once watched an episode of America’s Next Top Model (guilty pleasure) and one of the painfully thin models was complaining that she was actually trying to gain weight. She was drinking all sorts of protein drinks and having no luck. Tyra Banks wasn’t having it. She said, “Protein drinks?! Girl! Eat some potato salad! Enjoy yourself!” I’m with Tyra.
Growing up, we spent a lot of time on the UNC campus. My sister and I would ride bikes there daily, play hide & seek in the library (annoying!), spin ad nauseum under the solar system model in the planetarium, and generally run around like we owned the place. Every few months, a van would pull into the parking lot at the Top of the Hill (a convenience store where I would later buy cigarettes underaged), slide open its doors, and rent roller skates for $2. Now, normally, parents don’t send their children chaperone-less towards a van with cash, but this was the 70s. Come to think of it, there were no waivers or anything like that. I guess if someone had a liability issue, the mysterious roller skate van would just close its doors and haul ass. We had some good times *and* some crazy accidents on those skates. I think back on that decade with a lot of gratitude that things didn’t turn out worse.
Today I’m going to share a potato salad recipe with you. You can eat AS MUCH AS YOU WANT because you’re not paying by the pound. It’s from Duke’s Mayonnaise and, if I haven’t said it before, that’s the only mayo you should be using (in my opinion). This salad has a lot of stuff in it including sweet pickles. Mom loved sweet pickles and was always putting them in things. My sister’s favorite dish was a shell pasta salad with lots of mayo and sweet pickles. I did NOT love sweet pickles as a child, so there were always little piles of picked out sweet pickles next to wherever I was sitting. I’ve since come around and now I am the mother sneaking sweet pickles into everything. I remember watching a Top Chef (I swear I don’t watch that much reality TV) and there were several Southern chef contestants that particular season. Another chef commented, “those Southern boys are REALLY INTO pickles”. I would venture to say that Southern girls are really into them, too. Mom had a whole pickle section in her fridge. Nancy Lemann wrote, “Southerners need carbonation”. I’m going to expand that to, “Southerners need carbonation and pickles.”
This recipe also calls for bacon. You can leave it out to make it vegetarian. But if you include it, why don’t you get your five year old to cook it like my parents did?! True story, I was cooking bacon at five. My sister and I used to make bacon & sauteed mushroom sandwiches for my parents. Whatever doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, amiright?!
DUKE’S POTATO SALAD
serves 12
2 pounds red potatoes, boiled and cubed
3 hard-boiled eggs, chopped
1 2.2 oz. can sliced black olives
½ cup finely chopped red onion
½ cup chopped celery
½ cup finely chopped sweet pickles
½ cup finely chopped cooked bacon
1 cup Duke’s mayonnaise
1 Tbsp. Sauer’s mustard
1 ½ tsp. sweet pickle juice
1 ½ tsp white vinegar
½ tsp. Sauer’s black pepper
¼ tsp. salt
Mix all ingredients. Refrigerate at least 1 hour.
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