[Sandy] Hi-yaaah!
(sound of something crashing)
[Spongebob] I may be down, but I'm not out!
(squishing sounds)
[Fish] Way to go, buddy. It took us three days to make that potato salad.
(sound of Spongebob flying away) [Fish] Three days!
Hey, what's up guys. Welcome back to Binging with Babish
where this week, we're taking a look at potato salad
Moreover, how it could possibly take three days to make potato salad.
Personally, I think the guy was just trying to make an unrepentant Spongebob feel guilty, but!
It gave me an idea, and that was to pickle the potatoes.
I had heard of a few restaurants pickling their potatoes before making French fries.
And I figured that lacto-fermented funk could go really well in potato salad.
So we're packing our potatoes into mason jars and topping them with a little cabbage bonus topper.
This is just gonna bring a little extra flavor to the party.
And then we're going to weigh them down with some fermentation weights
because any potatoes that float above the brine are subject to oxidation.
Speaking of which, we are making a brine that is two and one-half tablespoons of kosher salt to four cups of water.
We're gonna stir that up real nice until everyone's dissolved and then pour the brine on top of the potatoes.
This is about as simple as pickling gets.
Once we've got those filled up to the bottom lip of the jars, we're going to affix our lids.
I've got these dope little airlock lids for fermentation, but bear in mind that you can do this entire process
in a bowl with some plastic wrap if you want. Just make sure everybody's submerged and use a glass bowl.
But however you do it, we are letting these guys sit for three days straight.
I obviously don't feel like waiting that long, so with a snap of my editor fingers...
we got ourselves some lacto-fermented potatoes.
Now that stark-white mush that we see in the bowls strikes me as the absolute standard potato salad.
That is: half a minced onion, one rib of minced celery,
half a cup of mayo, two tablespoons of white wine vinegar,
a pinch of sugar, a generous sprinkling, maybe one teaspoon of garlic powder,
an inexplicable and roughly chopped hard-boiled egg, a little kosher salt and freshly ground pepper to taste,
and you've got the basic dressing for basic potato salad.
But we can't we can't have the color or variety that comes from skin-on potatoes
so we need to go with some simply cubed russets that I similarly pickled for three days
I am going to simply drain these and boil them for about 15 minutes or until completely tender
and then once cooled, add them to our potato salad dressing.
You can obviously substitute regular boiled potatoes in this recipe if you want.
We're going to give them a tender stir, a gentle dump into our serving bowl, and
there you have it, the absolute standard American potato salad, AKA a bowl of mayo with some potatoes in it.
So naturally, it tastes quite good. Do the pickled potatoes make much of a difference?
Not really, because especially after only three days, the tang is pretty subtle
so it's getting drowned out by the mayonaise.
Why don't we try a bit more sophisticated potato salad courtesy of undisputed food god, J. Kenji-Lopez Alt?
So after boiling our potatoes to toothsome completion, we are finely chopping half of one red onion,
about two or three tablespoons of sour cream, a deluge of freshly chopped dill,
or about three tablespoons' worth, a tablespoon or two of white wine vinegar,
a few pinches of kosher salt to taste, some freshly ground pepper.
We're going light on the seasoning 'cause we're going to have to add more down the line.
Some slimly sliced scallions, and I like a few finely chopped chives.
Probably doesn't do anything, but I dunno, I had extra chives. I mean, look at all the chives I have.
We're mixing all this together before forgetting that we almost forgot to add a tablespoon and a half of olive oil
along with one large fork-handle full of whole grain mustard
We're then mixing that to combine and then adding our boiled and cooled potatoes
I feel like I'm saying the word potato a lot. Let's come up with another name for these things.
How about, uh, skoodledoos? No...let's just, um, call them potatoes.
Anyway, we're mixing our potatoes into the dressing and putting them in our serving bowl
and there you have it, the best potato salad in the observable universe.
Let's give it a try and see if using pickled potatoes made a difference. And the answer is: kind of.
They've definitely got that fermentation funk, but it's getting lost underneath that flavorful dressing.
I've only got one more potato salad trick up my sleeve
and that is to go full Guy Fieri and make a deep-fried potato salad
that really resembles something more like patatas bravas,
So we're just deep frying our potatoes for about eight minutes,
just enough time to make some old-school mortar and pestle aioli.
We're starting by crushing two large garlic cloves into a paste using the mortar and pestle
then once you got yourself a nice smooth paste, we're going to add two egg yolks.
This is going to add a distinct egg yolk-like quality to our aioli.
Then using the pestle (I think that's what this part is called)
we're just going to mix up the egg yolks with the garlic until they are well-combined.
And then while mixing rapidly, we're going to slowly drizzle in some neutral flavored oil
like canola or vegetable, until an emulsion forms.
Then once your aioli has outgrown its mortar (I think that's what that part is called)
we're taking the party back to my place, my place being a larger bowl.
Now we're going to bring some more flavorful oil to the party; that is, some olive oil.
Any second now, here it comes. One, two, three...and there we go.
You can switch off oils as necessary to your taste. I like a mixture of both, but either way
we are whisking constantly while very, very slowly adding oil until a thick emulsion forms,
maybe about a half cup of combined oils for every egg yolk.
Then once we have a nice thick aioli, we need to taste it to make sure it's not too harsh,
and then season to taste with kosher salt.
By this time your potatoes should be done frying
and deeply golden-brown on the outside and tender on the inside.
We're draining those on paper towels before placing in a bowl, tossing with a little bit of kosher salt,
and smoked paprika, which is gonna get us a little bit closer to patatas bravas.
Start the music, make sure that everybody's dancing, and then pour out onto a serving plate
and then we're just going to top these simply with aioli and some scallions
if we can get the aioli to come out of the friggin bottle.
Come on. Here we go. Perfect drizzle in three, two, one...
Oops, ok. It's fine, my kitchen ceiling has been looking really boring lately.
We're topping these guys with a smattering of scallions and there you have it.
Something that can almost, very charitably be called potato salad.
And it was at this moment that I remembered that Yukon Gold potatoes do not respond very well to deep-frying.
The flavors were good, but the texture was all off. It was gummy.
So maybe its time to take this recipe back to its inspiration, which is pickled French fries.
There's a restaurant called Al's in San Francisco where they pickle their potatoes
before making them into French fries, so I thought I would try just that with the fry, freeze, then re-fry method.
If you wanna see how to do that, click the link in the upper-right hand corner right now.
And then toss with a little bit of kosher salt while still warm, and let's see how they taste.
And I've gotta say, fermented French fries are an interesting snack.
They're sour and funky, and barely even need to be dipped in ketchup.
And I really recommend that you make all the previous recipes with normal potatoes
unless you're trying to make a sponge feel bad.