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 half 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
We have the same salad but we use some more carrots and sour cucumbers ( we eat both pickles and sour cucumbers in Poland. The difference is that sour cucumbers are prepare with a mixture of salt and water, and pickles are prepared with vinegar).
well good, we all cook the different way, we all try to do the best we can, do you think your way preparing potatoe salat is better? if it is I would like to know why!
In between we are just slovak cooks doing it the way we learned but willing to adjust to better ways …
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.
hello…just trying to see if you can be contacted so I can thank you!!
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’.
gotta correct you there , i live in spain and Ensaladilla Rusa is nothing like Slovakian potatoe salad, the Spanish version is swimming in mayonnaise, does not have pickels, nor onion, nor black pepper, so the final taste is very different.
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)
Kirby su male uhorky, nieco ako uhorky na nakladanie.Tu ich maju v Shop Rite pravidelne.
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…
I second that, MUSTard is a “must”:)
What kind of mustard is used? And it’s hard to see but I’m thinking you mean 1 tablespoon of vegetable oil? Does that seem accurate?
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.
“For the non-math people, that’s [3/8 of an onion] a quarter plus a quarter of another quarter.”
Lubos, it looks like the math challenge is on the other foot. Three-eights would be a quarter plus HALF of another quarter.
Right. I didn’t have my TI-89 calculator handy. 🙂 Helen, remember, I am an engineer which means I can do only the USELESS math.
Kirbies are small cucumbers used injars for pickeling. You will find them in the produce section they are displayed with regular cucumbers and they’re called Kirby.
I am so excited, ever since my Babichka passed away no one I know was ablet o remember what went in the salad- thankyou so much for helping me regain these great memories and to be able to share them with my kids who never got to know my Babi!
Glad to be of help, Tanya. You know, there are many people like you commenting on this site, how they are so happy to have found recipes they only vaguely remember from their childhood. Before starting Slovak Cooking I had no idea there were so many people out there searching for the traditional dishes of their Slovak and Czech grandparents.
thanks for all the information you dont relise how good the food is un til you cant get it any more grand parents and parents get old so you have to try your self thanks again
Zemiakový šalát pripravujem tak isto, len mi vo Vašom recepte chýba nálev. Na štyri zemiaky jedna majolka stačí, pri vačšom množstve zemiakov by bol šalát hustý a suchý. Základné suroviny zostávajú. Cibuľu ale varím v náleve. Nálev: asi 0,5 litra vody, soľ, cukor, ocot a nakrájaná cibuľa. Zemiaky znesú dosť soli, množstvo soli zvoľte podľa toho, ako keby ste varili ošúpané zemiaky. V tom je to kuchárske umenie, keď gazdiná odhadne správne pomery surovín. My majonézový šalát milujeme, na Vianoce zemiaky varím v 5 litrovom hrnci. Pozor na žlčník.
very good recipe I am preparing it the same way and sometimes you can add black olives as well but not too many.thank you fro sharing this recipe.
This dish is common in Turkey, known as “Russian salad.” So interesting how food travels across cultures!
Oh heck, I may do it he same way today, though my SO may give me a grief, like all that bad stuff, carbohydrate, etc.
but it’s soo good 🙂
Thank you so much for this. Somewhere in my travels I had Czech Potato
Salad and this one hits the mark. I love this along side of Weiner Schnitzel. I find it a delicious potato salad. And all the interpretations I have read – fine – do what you like as our grandmothers did depending on their region and what was available.
Thanks, Luboš!!! My ex-husband is a Vychodniar, and I’m trying to recreate his mom’s potato salad now for Easter. But she’s not talking to me, so I don’t want to ask.
But I think maybe she soaked the onion in a little vinegar before adding them. Have you heard of any other Slovaks doing that?
Ďakujem krásne!!!
Hi Tracey. I boil chopped onion for half an hour in water with vinegar (1/2 cup of vinegar for 2 cups of water ratio), strain, let them cool and add to salat. I’m making my potato salad right now. Happy Easter everybody!
Thanks, Lubos. I pulled off a proper Slovak Xmas for my kiddo since he couldn’t go visit babka and dedko this year. With a LOT of help from this site.
I agree on the spoon of regular mustard here, and I also soaked the chopped onion in vinegar in the fridge when I started (per babka). and to loosen it up a bit, I added some juice from the pickle jar.
I’m so damn proud. I even made a vianocka! and bobalky for the kapustnica!
(I’m American, his dad is a Vychodniar, and we live in CZ.)
This is the 2nd time I’ve made this salad for my Slovak boyfriend and he’s very impressed! Your website is AMAZING! Really this English girl master the Slovak cuisine. Ďakujem X