Potato Salad with Duck Bacon and Avocado Oil
Cook Together. Eat Together: Our Family Favorite Gets Even Better.
I confess, I messed around with our family’s favorite potato salad recipe. Perfected over the generations, the standard recipe is loaded with bacon, hardboiled eggs, celery and onions. To ‘finish’ it, you heat some of the bacon drippings, add vinegar, and fold the oil and vinegar blend into the salad. This type of potato salad is called “hot German potato salad.” And it’s one of Rebel’s and my favorites to eat.
Taste Test Kitchen – the Long Road
I’ve needed to experiment with substitutions for bacon ever since my oldest learned she has a pork allergy. I never knew that was a thing, and as a mom, it’s a strange feeling to realize you fed your child meat all those years while it aggravated her system. (Mom guilt is real.)
The first obvious substitution was turkey bacon, and so I made a side portion that way. It was ok but not great. Another time I tried tofu bacon (tempeh), and…we won’t do that again. Ideally, I wanted something good enough for the whole crowd so we didn’t have to make a separate batch.
Elyse had learned about duck bacon and asked me to try that. I thought, wow, that’s going to be rich and fatty. When I checked the labels, I found that duck bacon is less fatty than pork bacon. It does cost slightly more than pork bacon, but mainly Rebel and I found that it’s just hard to find. Sometimes it’s available at Costco, though. So in the future, we’re going to stock up and freeze it.
Anyway, the result was terrific. The duck bacon was delicious and we used avocado oil instead of bacon drippings, so it was slightly healthier. Another decision for this variation was to use a combination of red skin and yellow, Yukon gold potatoes and leave their skins on.
This will be my go to for potato salad from now on.
~ Lee
Potato Salad with Duck Bacon and Avocado Oil
ingredients:
- 12 medium-sized red potatoes, or mix with half Yukon gold potatoes
- 1 teaspoon salt
- 10 eggs
- 5 stalks celery
- 1/2 large white onion
- 12 ounces duck bacon
- 1-2 teaspoons celery seed
- 2 teaspoons salt, or more to taste
- 2 teaspoons white pepper
- 2 cups mayonnaise, or more to taste
- 4 tablespoons avocado oil
- 5 tablespoons vinegar, or more to taste
- paprika, for garnish
instructions:
How to cook Potato Salad with Duck Bacon and Avocado Oil
- Scrub potatoes. Add 1 teaspoon salt and potatoes to a large pot of water. Bring to a boil. Cook 20-30 minutes until tender when pierced with a fork but not falling apart. Remove potatoes and let cool enough to handle.
- While potatoes cook, boil the eggs, 10-12 minutes, until hard boiled. Cool.
- Fry duck bacon in a skillet until crisp. Drain on paper towels. Chop into 1" pieces.
- Cut potatoes into 1 1/2" pieces trying not to remove peel, although some will fall off. Place the cut up potatoes in an extra large bowl. Add the celery seed, 1 teaspoon salt and 1 teaspoon white pepper. Mix carefully without breaking apart the potatoes.
- Peel the eggs and separate yolks from whites into 2 medium-sized bowls. Mash the yolks with a fork. Cut whites into small pieces with a knife and fork. Place the yolks and egg whites in the bowl with the potatoes.
- Dice the celery and onion. Add to the potatoes.
- Add the bacon pieces to the potato mixture. Add 1 to 2 teaspoons salt and 2 teaspoons white pepper.
- Using two large spoons or spatulas, mix carefully. Add more celery seed and salt, to taste.
- Fold in the mayonnaise. Mix gently. The mixture should be thoroughly coated in mayonnaise without any dry sections. Add more mayonnaise as needed.
- Taste and adjust seasonings.
- In the same skillet used to cook the bacon, heat the olive oil just until warm. Remove from the heat and add the vinegar. Pour the oil and vinegar over the potato mixture and gently mix. Taste to see if vinegar flavor comes through. Add more vinegar, a tablespoon or less at a time, to taste – or wait and let the flavors set up overnight before adding more vinegar.
- Salad should not be dry – it will set up when chilled. Refrigerate, preferably overnight.
- When ready to serve, bring to room temperature. Taste again to see if more salt or vinegar are needed. Sprinkle the top with paprika.
