[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.
No idea if he's going to see this, but a big reason why he didn't get a lot of fermentation funk was that he used Morton's kosher salt instead of Diamond Crystal. Morton's has an anti-caking agent in it that retards fermentation. They make a pickling salt that doesn't have that anti-caking agent in it if you want to use Morton's for pickling.
Also, boiling or at least par boiling the potatoes before pickling will make sugars more readily available to the bacteria to improve fermentation
Somewhere in the wilderness of New Jersey, Brad Leone sheds a single fermented tear.
Your memory serves you right, /u/OliverBabish, the pestle is used to grind things within the mortar.
Useful links:
• J. Kenji Lopez-Alt's potato salad recipe
• Serious Eats' guide to potatoes
RIP Stephen Hillenburg
It took us 3 days to make that potato salad! 3 days!
excuse me where's the fond
Spuds, Andrew. You're looking for the word, spuds.
*skoodledoo salad
This could have gone in a very different direction and I'm so happy it didn't.