I’ve found the secret ingredient for the best-ever potato salad

It's a staple of the Aussie barbeque, and this ingredient is a $0.55 game-changer.

Marina Karris

2 min read

April 10, 2024 - 12:26PM

Secret ingredient potato salad

We can all agree that potato salad is a true Aussie barbecue staple (actually, we eat it all year round), but I’ve come to learn that the ingredients that make up the humble salad can spark quite the debate. From household to household, the potato salad rules vary. Yep, there’s so much more to a potato salad than potatoes, mayo and a few bits of onion.

The best potato salads in Australia

Of course, there’s the supermarket mayo-drenched kind that we’ve all been eating for decades. Then there’s our top-rated classic potato salad, loaded with bacon, cooked onion, egg and gherkins. And let’s not forget about warm roast potato salad, where prosciutto is cooked with the potatoes and tossed in a caper dressing (I love this one when the weather cools). Whatever the variation, potato salad can do no wrong in our eyes.

Best toppings for potato salad

The potato salad additions that seem to be the most controversial are egg, pickles, herbs and of course, the dressing. Is mayo a must? Personally, I love the tang that comes from a mix of mayo, sour cream, vinegar and mustard. A caper or pickle is essential, parsley and chives are a big yes, but I can’t stand dill (I know, unpopular opinion).

The potato salad you’ll see at my family barbecue is either a variation of the Armenian-style potato salad (with a little mint added) or one where the potato has been boiled with a little garlic and stock to give them flavour, then tossed in a simple mayo, mustard and vinegar dressing.

Revealed: my secret potato salad ingredient

With one viral post after another, it’s clear that the key to the best-ever potato salad lies in none other than a $0.55 sachet of goodness: French onion soup mix.

This flavour-bomb ingredient gives the creamy dressing a savoury, well-rounded flavour and slight hint of sweetness. This little sachet truly has it all, and saves you from faffing around with other additions like mustard, garlic powder, onions (I could go on).

More potato salad secrets

Ok, so I have more than one secret. Of course the fact that our air fryer potato salad uses Australia’s hottest appliance to get the potatoes crispy in record time is a pretty cool hack. Cooking the bacon ON TOP of the French onion soup and mayo-coated potatoes to soak up all that flavour is genius too. And the dressing, made from mayonnaise, sour cream, lemon juice and chives is the perfect balance of creamy and tangy.

So, add that little sachet to your shopping trolley next time you’re at Coles… and consider your potato salad changed for life (for $0.55.)

Get our air fryer potato salad recipe here (complete with French onion soup mix).

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Originally published as I’ve found the secret ingredient for the best-ever potato salad