Best Macaroni Salad Ever - How to Make Deli-Style Macaroni Salad

hello this is chef john from food wishes comm with macaroni salad that's right I cannot believe this many summers have come and gone and I have not shared my take on this iconic summer side dish I mean I shudder to think what you've been using instead no offense so I apologize for the delay but hopefully after you see and taste how awesome this comes out all will be forgiven so let's go ahead and get started with the dressing and one of the keys to a great macaroni salad is to do the dressing first for reasons I'll explain in a second so we're gonna start with some mayonnaise and of course we're gonna use real full fat mayonnaise and to the mayonnaise we'll add a couple spoons of Dijon mustard to be honest yellow mustard seems to be more traditional but I really do like the Dijon better here so a little bit of mustard and then we're also going to need some vinegar and for this I'm recommending plain white distilled vinegar and it's not like you're gonna wreck this using a different vinegar but really this is just in here for the acidity and I think we want something that has a neutral flavor and then we'll need to season this up a little bit with a shake of cayenne pepper as well as some freshly ground black pepper and of course some salt and we'll take a whisk and we'll mix that up and that is basically the base of the dressing for this macaroni salad except for one key crucial and controversial ingredient sugar so while it is true that your classic American deli style macaroni salad does use sort of a sweet dressing I find that the most popular recipes out there call for way way too much like a half a cup or two-thirds of a cup of sugar so I'm only gonna call for one or two tablespoons which I think provides plenty of sweetness especially since we're gonna add lots of sweet vegetables and once that's all mixed together the liquid portion of our dressing is done and we have to move on to the solids also known as our diced veggies so we'll start with a whole bunch of finely diced celery as well as some grated carrot and then we want a little bit of onion in this and I'm gonna use the white and light green parts of some scallions but just regular onion will work fine and then for color sweetness and a little bitterness we're definitely gonna do some pepper and I'm going to use several kinds I'm gonna go with some red bell pepper and then also some green pepper in the form of poblano and jalapeno and then we'll take a spatula and we'll mix this up and I really think it's important we do this step before we cook our pasta okay because these troubles are almost gonna get like a quick pickling in this dressing ok the salt the sugar the acid is gonna pull liquid out of those vegetables it's gonna sort of firm up and crisp up the texture and I really do think it makes a little bit of a difference and besides no one can really prove otherwise and once that's mixed we'll just pop that in the fridge while we prepare our macaroni and I'm just gonna leave that spatula right in there because we are gonna use that to mix the salad up so we'll pop that in the fridge and move on to our elbow macaroni so what we have here is one pound of elbow macaroni that's about 4 cups and we are gonna cook this in some generously salted boiling water and I said cook not under cook we're gonna cook this all the way just like as if we were gonna eat this hot I don't have any idea who came up with the notion that you're supposed to under cook pasta for a salad but it's just not true unless you want a horrible gummy texture macaroni salad I mean who knows maybe you do but assuming you want an enjoyable texture I recommend cooking at the full time at which point we're gonna drain that very very well so let's pour that into a colander to let it drain and do not under any circumstances rinse this pasta for this particular salad that is the biggest mistake you could make so don't do it just let this sit and drain for about five minutes and every so often I want you to give it the old shake of sheikha which is gonna help knock off some of that water and once we're convinced our macaroni is very very well drained we will transfer that into a large mixing bowl and proceed with probably the most important step of this whole process the tossing and cooling of the macaroni what we'll do is we'll take our spatula from the dressing and we'll use that to toss this macaroni occasionally until it cools down to just about room temp and while we're using the spatula from the dressing we're definitely not gonna add any dressing until this has cooled down all right if you had a mayonnaise-based dressing too hot macaroni which you'll end up with is a very greasy macaroni salad and what's gonna happen here is you're tossing and cooling a very fine layer of starch is going to form on each one of those pieces of macaroni and that thin layer starch has been proven to more effectively grab on and hold on to that mayonnaise-based dressing it's true they've done studies where the Mayo Clinic but anyway like I said we want to cool that down to about room temperature and if everything's gone according to plan those pieces of macaroni should just be tacky enough to stick to your hand so that's perfect right there and yes I will stop touching the macaroni now and at this point finally we can go ahead and add our dressing and as you're mixing this if you're thinking man this is way too much dressing seems kind of wet don't worry because you prepped your macaroni properly by the time this is ready to serve it's going to be fully and perfectly absorbed trust me and by the way we're not going to taste it at this point okay we don't wanna season this until that macaroni has fully absorbed the dressing and it's at the temperature we're gonna serve it so what we'll do is we'll wrap it up and we'll pop it in the fridge for at least four hours but overnight is best which is how long I left mine in the fridge and then the next day when we pull it out it should look something like this and as predicted all our dressing has been perfectly absorbed and what I like to do at this point is take the spatula and give it a nice mix so we can really see what we have and while you can definitely serve it like this I generally like to freshen it up a little bit with another small spoon of mayonnaise in just a little touch of cold water just like a tablespoon or two just drizzle it in and we'll give that a mix and while that's really not gonna significantly change the characteristics of the salad it is like I said gonna give it a little bit of a fresher look so you decide you are the Tony Tony Tony of your macaroni so that kind of stuffs up to you and then once our salad has been tossed and freshened up the last and most important step we have to taste for seasoning so I gave mine a taste and it was perfect and at that point we'll transfer it to some kind of serving container and by the way because this salad is so naturally beautiful and fresh looking it does not need any garnish unless of course you want people to share it on social media which in that case you better top it with some green onions you think it was gonna pin this with no garnish on top I don't think so so I did a little green onion for the final touch and that's it my take on the classic all-american macaroni salad is done and I realize taste is subjective but for me this is just the epitome of the classic American macaroni salad slightly but not too sweet with just the right level of acidity and a very generous amount of vegetables as well as a beautiful silky creamy field because we didn't dress that macaroni hot but anyway that's it my version of the classic American macaroni salad and of course this is gonna pair beautifully with anything you barbecue grill or smoked this summer I probably should have done that in a different order but anyway the point is I really hope you give this a try soon so head over to food wishes comm for all the ingredient amounts and more info as usual and as always enjoy [Music]

Channel: Food Wishes

Views: 4,346,996

Rating: 4.8637629 out of 5

Keywords: Macaroni Salad, Salad (Type Of Dish), Delicatessen (Cuisine), Macaroni (Food), Food (TV Genre), Best, Cooking, chef, john, foodwishes, Recipe, Kitchen, side dish, side, pasta, summer, bbq, Barbecue (Cuisine), Restaurant

Id: jEo9VXYVrxs

Length: 7min 7sec (427 seconds)

Published: Tue Jun 09 2015

Reddit Comments

[u/grantistheman]

Wow, I've never liked Macaroni salad, but that looked absolutely DELICIOUS.

[u/Time_too_poop]

This is the best mac salad!