Potato Salad (Zemiakový Šalát)
Ingredients: 4 potatoes, about half an onion, 15oz can of sweet peas, 3 carrots, 2 dill pickles, 2 eggs, 6 tablespoons of mayonnaise, salt, black pepper, paprika
Prep Time: 1 hour, plus few hours to sit in the fridge
Yesterday my mom stopped here in Washington, D.C. on her way to San Francisco. I figured this was a golden opportunity to learn how she makes her really good potato salad. Here is the recipe for the Slovak potato salad, ala my mom.
Start by boiling unpeeled potatoes and 3 carrots, peeled, in salted water. At some point also hard boil 2 eggs.
Chop up about 3/8 of an onion into small cubes. For the non-math people, that’s a quarter plus a quarter of another quarter. The carrots are done once they get soft (check them by occasionally poking them with a fork). Slice the carrots into thin quarter circle wedges.
Also chop up the pickles.
Combine vegetables in a pot.
Take out the potatoes when they are almost cooked through (soft outside with a slightly hard core in the middle). Peel them, dice them, and add to the pot.
Now stir in mayo. We started off with 3 spoonfuls, but ended up putting in 6.
Finally, cut up the eggs and mix into the salad. Add salt and black pepper to taste. Let sit in the fridge for few hours before serving. To see the final creation, check out the recipe for fried fish. Also, another popular Slovak salad is called treska. It is a fish salad made with onion and mustard.
This is absolutely awesome. In Russia we have the same salad, called “Zimnii” or “Olivie” and it has absolutely same ingradients, just in addition of some meat. I just found the reference on it in wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_salad
Made this last week from this recipe. Was a HUGE hit with my Slovak friends.
Great to hear! I am about to have some myself here at my dad’s house in Slovakia. And of course, the fried carp and kapustnica.
It’s also called ‘Russian salad’ in English or ‘Ensaladilla Rusa’ in Spanish – here they often mix it with tuna and use it as ‘tapas’.
Potato salad:
6 medium potatoes
4 hard boiled eggs
1/4 lb ham
1 small can or frozen bag of peas and carrots
1 small apple
2 pickles
1 tbs chopped pimento
1 small onion
2 strips of bacon
Mayo
Boil and cool potatoes, dice them, dice eggs choppe onion, pickle, dice apple. Fry bacon and use only little bits not grease. If you use fozen peas and carrots cook them. Combine wit Mayo. We called this salad Christmas salad.
Hi Lubos.
If you will add to your original recipe couple of small fresh kirbies finely chopped and 1 bunch of scallions also finely chopped,you’ll get a burst of freshness and taste. Enjoy.
geez Aigul, now I am really interested, what the heck are kirbies? As I have no idea, nothing I ran across in Slovak or any other cuisine, unless it’s some new name for something. I am getting really old to change
I second that. The only kirbies I know are the Nintendo ones, and they are too cute to chop up!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kirby_(character)
HMMMM…#
That’s the best salad I’ve ever ate….Butyou forgot one the most important thing….
The Mayo must be Home-Made One.
All you need is :
- 6-8 eggs – yells to be separated of whites
- 3/4 – 1l of veg. oil
- 1 spoon of mustard
this mayo is The Havens in your mounth…
One thing that you could look into adding – mustard! Before you mix in the mayo, in a separate bowl, mix in about 2 tbsp of mustard (Slovak if you can get it, the standard north American yellow will work too, but maybe a bit less of that one). It gives the salad a bit of a tangy taste (but not overpowering in the least).
Also – an easy cheat – buy a pack of frozen peas and diced carrots and boil those instead. Way easier and much quicker. Less work is always a bonus.