The Older Bolder Life Friday Feast: Clay’s Potato Salad

For the first time in over four years as we’ve traveled the low carb and nutritional ketosis roads, and for several reasons, we’ve dug out an old family favorite recipe for the best damn potato salad we’ve ever tasted – Clay’s Potato Salad.

Quite frankly, we’ve not eaten potatoes of the non-sweet potato variety in years, and sweet potatoes rarely when the need for a carb-refeed arose, so this indeed is a departure for us.

For those eating along classic Primal or Paleo paths, and pending both your activity levels and carb tolerance, dabbling now and again with potatoes certainly isn’t verboten, though your neighborhood keto police might disagree.

We’ve dug this recipe out (and cleaned it up) mainly because it tastes so damn good, and has been part of our family food lexicon for years and years. It’s probably so delicious in part due to the inclusion of bacon and even incorporating a bit of the bacon drippings into the salad (trust me on this, it’s magical).

I’m also back into training for Masters level track and field events now that the COVID-19 embargo on events is nearing the end, and find myself lagging from a performance standpoint a bit on my leanest carb days. Finally, cooked and cooled potatoes are a great source of resistant starch, which we’ve been experimenting with a bit around our camp of late, and appear to be the form my wife best tolerates.

My lovely wife and I first tasted this recipe now nearly 40 years ago. We were living in San Antonio as I finished grad school; only during our most affluent weeks did we have two nickels to rub together. We lived in a tiny apartment, survived on a food budget of less than $40/week, tromped all over San Antonio for free entertainment and were happy as could be.

A young couple we knew, fellow paupers in grad school downtown, lucked into house sitting for one of her professors one summer. They had a charming old English tudor at their disposal with a gourmet kitchen and an exquisitely landscaped pool in the backyard.

It was there on a hot summer day that we first tasted this brawny, classic potato salad recipe. Bacon was a splurge for us back then; it was nothing short of ambrosial that afternoon. We stole the leftovers and rationed them out over the next week.

Like all great recipes that foodies hoard, we’ve tweaked this one around the edges and definitely lean toward a tart, spicy, full-of-crunchy-vegetables mix, and have changed out the old for healthier dressing ingredients to align with a primal/paleo palate. That said, the nuts and bolts of the recipe remain the same.

Finally, like all salads of this sort, this recipe is ultimately customizable to suit your family’s tastes and what’s in the fridge and pantry; amounts shown in the ingredient list below are to be considered rough guidelines.

And a word to the wise – don’t skimp on either the mustard or the pickle juice.

2 medium sweet potatoes, cut into 3/4-inch slices
8-10 small to medium new red potatoes, halved if bigger
1 pound thick-sliced bacon in 1-inch pieces, crisped and drained, reserve drippings

1 large sweet onion, small to medium dice (more as desired)
6-8 stalks celery with tender leaves, chopped
1 red bell or Mediterraneo Dulce pepper, seeded and diced
1 cup chopped kosher dill pickles

1 tbsp seasoned salt



1/2 cup avocado oil mayo (see below)
1/2 cup full-fat Greek yogurt (see below)

1/4 to 1/2 cup prepared yellow mustard (see below)
Pickle juice to taste (see below)
Paprika

Optional
4 boiled eggs, cut into bite-sized pieces
1/2 cup sliced pickled jalapeños
1/2 cup chopped green onion, white and green parts
1/2 cup sliced green olives
Mustard, whole grain

Boil the scrubbed and trimmed spuds until fork tender, rinse under cool water until you can handle, then dice medium. Place in a large bowl.

If you’ve not already done so, fry the bacon crisp and set aside to drain well. Pour the hot bacon drippings over the spuds and make sure to scrape all the brown, crusty goodness out of the pan. Crumble the bacon when cooled and set aside.

Chop and dice the sweet onion, green onion, celery, bell or other pepper, dill pickles, and other optional goodies from the list to the potato bowl. Add half the crumbled bacon.

Sprinkle the growing mixture with the seasoned salt. Start by stirring in at least 1/2 cup each of the mayonnaise and yogurt and 1/4 cup yellow mustard, knowing full well that it won’t be enough.

At this point we like to stir in the pickle juice (our tradition calls for using quite a bit to add a punchy vinegar bite to the salad), we add a couple of big spoons of whole grain mustard and then add more mustard and mayo/yogurt to get it to the consistency desired. How much you’ll eventually need will depend on personal taste and how soft your spuds are.

Smooth the top, dust liberally with paprika and sprinkle with the remainder of the bacon. Note this potato salad is very good after resting in the fridge for 4 hours and great the next day, you want it good and cold for the best flavor and to set those resistant starches.

Enjoy.