French Potato Salad

This French potato salad recipe may be the summertime side dish you didn’t know you needed. We love regular potato salad too, but the French version is lighter and brings a more sophisticated flavor to your meals.

It’s just as easy to make as any other potato salad but uses a vinaigrette rather than the traditional mayonnaise-based dressing. That lighter dressing leaves room for the delicate flavor of baby potatoes and the brightness of fresh herbs to shine through.

Ingredients for French Potato Salad

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• Baby red and yellow potatoes: Baby potatoes are what’s called “waxy” potatoes, so they’ll keep a firm texture when cooked for the salad. They also have a sweet and delicate flavor and make bite-size rounds when sliced.
• Garlic: Garlic brings a pungent, savory flavor to the salad and its dressing. It also helps emulsify the vinaigrette, so it won’t separate as quickly into oil and vinegar.
• Olive oil: Olive oil provides the oil element of a classic vinaigrette. It also helps capture fat-soluble flavor molecules from the other ingredients and distribute them through the salad.
• Champagne or white wine vinegar: These are both mild and flavorful vinegars, with champagne vinegar typically being the subtler of the two. They’re the olive oil’s partner in vinaigrette making, and they also absorb any water-soluble flavor molecules and distribute them through the salad.
• Dijon mustard: Dijon mustard adds a pungent and assertive savory flavor to the vinaigrette, which complements the baby potatoes’ sweetness. Like the garlic, it also helps emulsify the vinaigrette.
• Shallot: The shallot adds a mild and pleasant onion flavor to the salad.
• Chervil, parsley, chives and tarragon: These four fresh herbs are a classically French combination known as “fines herbes.” They bring bright herbal flavors to the salad, as well as a vivid green color that provides a pleasing visual contrast with the pale potatoes.

Directions

Step 1: Cook the potatoes

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Bring the potatoes to a boil in a large saucepan, then reduce the heat and simmer for 10 to 15 minutes or until they’re tender when tested with a skewer. Use a slotted spoon to remove the potatoes to a colander, and let them drain and cool slightly. While they’re cooling, add the clove of garlic to the pot of water, and cook it for one minute. Scoop the garlic out with the slotted spoon and drop it into a cup of ice water to chill. Drain the garlic and pat it dry, then mince it. Keep back 1/4 cup of the garlic-scented cooking liquid.

Step 2: Assemble the potato salad

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Cut the potatoes into 1/4-inch rounds once they’re cool enough to handle, then place them in a large bowl. In a smaller bowl, whisk the cooking liquid with the oil and vinegar, garlic, mustard, salt and pepper. Pour the vinaigrette over the warm potatoes and toss them until they’re thoroughly coated, then gently stir in the fresh herbs and minced shallot. Serve the salad warm or at room temperature.

Editor’s Tip: If you can’t find shallots, a tablespoon of finely diced red onion is a suitable substitute. Chervil can also be difficult to find, but fennel fronds have a similar flavor.

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French Potato Salad Variations

• Add cooked green beans: For a more colorful salad, halve a cup or two of fresh green beans, cook them al dente and cool them before adding them to the salad. Delicate French-style “filet” beans are the best choice—or for a showier take on this theme, use thin asparagus spears instead.
• Elevate your salad with lardons: If your local butcher sells bacon in an unsliced slab, buy a piece and cut it into inch-long strips like short, skinny French fries (the French call these pieces of bacon lardons). Simmer them in water for a few minutes, dry them and saute them until they’re well browned and crisp on the outside, then add them to your potato salad.
• Go wild with vegetables and herbs: A vinaigrette-style potato salad is a blank canvas you can fill with your imagination. Potatoes are great supporting players, so almost any combination of vegetables and herbs that works together without potatoes will also work in a potato salad. For example, if you add cucumbers, tomatoes and fresh basil (and rather more garlic), you’ll have a Sicilian potato salad.

How to Store French Potato Salad

Your best option for storage is an airtight container in the refrigerator. You can also store it in its serving bowl, as long as you press some sort of covering—waxed paper or a beeswax-infused food wrap—directly against the surface of the potatoes, to keep air out.

Can I make French potato salad ahead of time?

Absolutely. If anything, it will taste better after a day or two in the fridge lets the other flavors infuse into the potatoes. It will hold easily for three to four days in the refrigerator, though the herbs will not be as bright. If you’re working more than a day ahead, you might opt to add the herbs just before you serve the salad.

Can I freeze French potato salad?

Surprisingly, yes. Waxy baby potatoes do much better with freezing and thawing than starchy russets, and their texture will be only modestly affected. The salad’s vinaigrette dressing also freezes and thaws well, unlike the mayo-based dressing on most potato salads.

French Potato Salad Tips

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Is there a good substitute for baby potatoes?

Any waxy potato will work in this recipe, though baby potatoes have the best appearance. The closest substitute is fingerling potatoes, which cook like baby potatoes even when mature. They’ll also give you more perfect rounds and fewer end slices, an added bonus.

What should I serve with French potato salad?

French potato salad goes well with most summertime meals, from backyard burgers to cold fried chicken at your favorite picnic spot. It’s a more sophisticated offering than basic potato salads, so it’s equally suitable as a side dish for light entrees such as herbed chicken breast or poached salmon. Top things off with a few artichoke hearts, roasted peppers, capers or olives, and it will all add up to a memorable meal.

Can I use other herbs in this salad?

Yes, of course. Our French potato salad recipe sticks to the classic four-herb combination known to the French as fines herbes, but other fresh herbs including thyme, rosemary, dill and even lavender (yes, lavender) all work nicely with a salad like this one.