Recipe Czech Potato Salad

Potato salad is the mainstay of Czech cuisine and each housewife has her own recipe. This salad is traditionally served with Schnitzels and carp which is ‘the Czech turkey’ at Christmas. Potato salad is also the main ingredient used in open-faced sandwiches. You need not be a top chef to prepare a potato salad.

Potato salad, popular all over Europe and North America, is said to have originated in Germany where it is not a meal in itself but a side dish which accompanies the main dish.

Potato Salad Recipe

Ingredients

* 1 kg potatoes
* 2 carrots
* 1 big onion
* 3 pickled gherkins
* 2 hardboiled eggs
* 50 g peas (from a tin)
* 1 Tbs mustard
* 1 Tbs olive oil
* 3 tablespoons mayonnaise
* finely chopped fresh parsley (optional)
* salt and pepper to taste

Method

1. Boil unpeeled potatoes in water with salt and let cool off
2. Peel and dice the potatoes and the hardboiled eggs
3. Finely chop the onion, pickles and parsley
4. Mix all ingredients together gradually adding the mustard and olive oil
5. Add the mayonnaise and stir gently

Potato salad tastes best when you eat it the next day.

Who invented Potato Salad?

There are two versions. In the sixteenth century, Spanish explorers had discovered the potato in the New World and took home the potato salad recipe. It was a simple version of today’s salad: potatoes were boiled in wine or a mixture of vinegar and spices. And then European settlers introduced the salad in America. The second version is that potato salad was invented in Germany, spread throughout Europe and later to the European colonies in the nineteenth century. When the potato was introduced in Europe, it was the food for the poor, for prisoners and livestock.
‘Potato Eaters’ is a painting by The Dutch painter Vincent van Gogh. He depicts a poor family sitting around the table and eating potatoes.