Japanese Potato Salad Recipe
Japanese often make this classic potato salad recipe at home. It’s similar to western potato salad, but is flavored with dashi and sometimes rice vinegar. This recipe includes the best of classic mashed potatoes and combines it with a textural crunch. If you’re a potato salad lover, you will enjoy this slight alteration to a classic dish.
While Japan may be famous for sashimi, sushi, and other dishes, Japanese often cook dishes such as Karaage, Tonkatsu, and Hamburger Steak that are economical and comforting to eat at home. Potato salad is imported from western cuisine and known as youshoku in Japanese. Japanese potato salad contains cucumbers, eggs, potatoes, ham and is flavored with dashi, salt, mayonnaise and black pepper. Potato salad is great to cook at home because you can include a variety of left-overs and vegetables. You can add carrots, red and green bell peppers, onions, green onions, mushrooms and other ingredients if desired. You can make Japanese potato salad as a popular party side-dish or a cozy weekday dinner. Please let me know what you think of the recipe in the comments below!
Japanese Potato Salad Recipe Tips
- It’s important to salt and squeeze the cucumbers in order to keep your potato salad from getting soggy.
- I add ham not just for color, but it also because it adds salty burst of flavor to the potato salad.
- You can save Japanese potato salad for at least 3-4 days in the refrigerator.
- When serving this dish, I like to add cherry tomatoes and broccoli or salad for garnish. This adds a nice colorful red and green making the dish look even more appetizing.
- You can add soy sauce and mustard as well for a slight variation of taste. The recipe below includes just the basic ingredients so you can easily make it at home.
- You can add tofu dregs instead of the potatoes. If you want to decrease the number of calories and keep the same great taste, I would recommend using 50% tofu dregs and 50% potatoes.
Japanese Potato Salad Recipe
Ingredients
- 2 eggs
- 3 potatoes
- 1/4 tsp salt This is needed 2 times. Once for the cucumber and once for the potatoes.
- 1/2 tsp dashi
- 5 tbsp mayonnaise
- 100 g ham
- 1/2 cucumber
- 1 tbsp butter
- black pepper
Instructions
- Boil 2 eggs for 7 minutes to make hard boiled eggs
- Boil hot water for potatoes
- Peel and chop 3 potatoes
- Put the 3 chopped potatoes into the boiling water and boil for 10 minutes
- Cut a cucumber in half
- Thinly slice the half cucumber and add 1/4 tsp of salt
- Mix the salt and the sliced cucumbers
- Let the salt and sliced cucumbers sit for 10 minutes
- Slice 100 grams of ham into pieces of about 1 cm
- Prepare ice water for the boiled eggs
- Put the boiled eggs into the ice water (this isn't necessary, but makes it easier to peel the eggs)
- Check the potatoes' hardness. If softened, and mash the potatoes in a mixing bowl with 1 tbsp of butter.
- Drain the water out of the cucumbers by hand pressing them. Add the hand-pressed cucumbers to the potato mixing bowl.
- Add the ham and boiled eggs to the mixing bowl. Add 1 tsp of dashi, 5 tbsp of mayonaaise, and 1/4 tsp of salt to the mixing bowl. Add black pepper for taste if desired.
- Mix all the ingredients in the bowl. You can add additional salt for flavor if desired.
- Serve and enjoy!
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