Swabian potato salad

Ingredients

• Waxy potatoes800 g
• Onion — very finely chopped1
• Hot vegetable stock250 ml
• Wine vinegar3 tbsp
• Mustard1 tsp
• Neutral oil4 tbsp
• Chivesto taste
• Salt and pepperto taste

Salt and spices grow more slowly than the rest: doubling a dish does not double the pepper.

Weight converts to ounces and volume to cups. Grams of flour are not turned into cups, because that depends on how tightly it is packed.

Method

1. 1

   Boil the potatoes in their skins until done, about twenty minutes from the boil. Test with a knife: it should go in without dropping through.

   25 min

2. 2

   While they cook, warm the stock with the onion, vinegar, mustard, salt and pepper, without letting it boil.

   5 min

3. 3

   Peel the potatoes while hot, holding them on a fork, and slice them three or four millimetres thick straight into the bowl.

   8 min

4. 4

   Pour the hot dressing over and leave it twenty minutes, turning it once. The potato drinks almost all of the liquid.

   20 min

5. 5

   Add the oil, turn it again and taste. It should be slightly sharper than feels right; the flavour settles as it stands.

   3 min

About the dish

Germany is split in two over this salad. The north makes it with mayonnaise, the south with stock, and each side considers the other a misunderstanding. This is the Swabian version.

The potato is dressed hot. Warm slices drink the stock; cold ones do not, and the dressing simply runs to the bottom of the bowl. That is why it cannot be assembled later from cold potato.

It needs a variety that holds together — waxy rather than floury. A floury potato turns the salad to mash at the first stir.

Worth knowing

• — A proper Swabian salad is faintly slippery — schlotzig, as the south puts it. That is not a fault but the sign that the potato gave its starch to the dressing.
• — The oil goes in last, after the stock. Added first it coats the slices in a film and the stock never gets through.
• — Serve it warm or at room temperature, never from the fridge: cold thickens the oil and shuts the flavour down.

Nutrition

Per serving at the base yield, calculated from the ingredients rather than measured in a lab.

Calories

290 kcal

Protein

5 g

Fat

14 g

Carbs

36 g

More from Germany

• Käsespätzle — Swabian egg noodles layered with cheese and buried under fried onion.
• Rinderrouladen — Thin slices of beef rolled around mustard, bacon and gherkin and braised until they give way.
• Sauerbraten — Beef steeped for days in a vinegar marinade and braised in it, with a gravy thickened on gingerbread.