Supermassive Potato, Sausage, and Egg Salad – AKA: I Just Threw Everything in There
I had just attended a small Oktoberfest shindig and thought to myself, “Why don’t I have any recipes for anything here?” German food is often overshadowed by their French and Italian neighbors, but you’d have to be crazy if a nice sausage and a pretzel with some mustard didn’t hit the spot now and again.
That being said, don’t expect any authentic German recipes here. This is America. We do big things. We do ridiculous things. Even though everything is supposedly bigger in Texas, I’m from California, and we do big things here too. You’re gonna have to run a half marathon to burn this one off.
I asked myself, “Why have separate side dishes when I could just combine them all into one?” So I did that. Why? Cuz this is ‘Murica, that’s why. The potatoes? Obviously. Vinegar or Mayo? Both! How ’bout a couple sausages and some egg salad to go along with the potato salad. Nonsense! Put everything together dummy! Come lose your sense of reason with me and partake in my mental illness.
Serving Size: 6-8…or 4 Mes
- 2 lbs. Gold Potatoes, unpeeled, and cubed into 1 inch pieces
- 3 Beef Hot Links (or other sausages on hand)
- 6 Hard Boiled Eggs
- 1 Cup Mayonnaise
- 2 Stalks Celery, diced
- 3 Large Jalapenos, diced
- 1/4 Cup Horseradish Mustard (any hot mustard should do)
- 1/4 Cup Buttermilk
- 1/4 Cup Green Onion, diced
- 2 tsp. Paprika
- 2 tsp. Cayenne Powder
- 2 tsp. Garlic Powder
- 2 tsp. Onion Powder
- 2 tsp. Apple Cider Vinegar
- 1/4 tsp. Sea Salt (add more to taste)
- 1/2 tsp. Fresh Ground Black Pepper
- More Paprika and Green Onion for garnish
1.) The first step here will be to cook the eggs. You’re going to want to do this one first because the eggs need to be nice and cool before cutting them up and integrating them into the salad.
I like to steam my eggs, but you can do it any way and get pretty much the same result. I just boil some water in a stockpot with a steamer insert. After the water starts boiling, I reduce the temp down to medium high, place the eggs in the basket, cover, and then let them cook for 13 minutes.
Once there are two minutes left, I drop a tray of ice cubes into a large mixing bowl, fill 2/3 of the way with water, then let the water cool down a bit, which should happen at about the time your timer goes off. Then, I transfer the eggs into the bowl for another 13 minutes and then remove them and let air dry on the counter.
2.) Next, let’s get to the potatoes. 2 lbs of gold potatoes is roughly 8-10 medium sized potatoes in case you don’t have a scale. It also doesn’t have to be perfect. I eyeball almost everything anyway, so salt enough water to cover the potatoes by at least an inch and fire it up. Mix the salt into the water, and just like pasta, just enough to make it taste like the ocean. Bring the water to a boil and then bring down to a small roll and boil for 10 minutes. Test at 8 minutes to see where they’re at. You don’t want your potatoes to crumble when you mix all the salad ingredients, so don’t overcook them. You’re going to want to let them cool when they’re done, so let’s put them into a mixing bowl and move on.
3.) If you’re a pro, you can start browning your sausages while the potatoes are boiling, but don’t worry if you’re not great at multi-tasking, you can do one step at a time. Bring a small stainless steel pan up to medium/high heat, and without adding any oil, just plop your sausages down and let them go for a couple of minutes. I chose beef hot links, because, well, obviously, if you’ve read any of my other recipes. If you’ve got some other type already on hand, or they just don’t happen to be in your local grocery, don’t worry, you can really put almost any other sausage in here and it’ll work just fine.
You’ll want to get a nice char on those sausages, which will do wonders for the salad’s flavor. That sentence probably never crossed the fictitious inventor of the salad’s mind. Salads are supposed to be nutritious green dishes, not meaty, mayo laced abominations such as this. Getting back to the task at hand, once one side is nicely crisped, flip ’em over and repeat. Place them along side your potatoes to cool down.
4.) Now that we’ve got the 3 main parts cooked and cooling down, we can move on to the glue of the dish, the emulsion, or as Obi-Wan described the Force to Luke, the part that, “surrounds us, and penetrates us, it binds the galaxy together.” I’m talking about the mayo and everything else that goes along with it.
Grab your biggest mixing bowl and start by measuring out the mayo and dropping it (gently) right down in. Dice up the jalapenos, green onions, and celery and add them to the bowl. Measure out the cayenne, paprika, onion and garlic powders, the mustard, the buttermilk, the vinegar, and the salt and pepper and add them as well. Mix everything up until well combined and uniform.
5.) Your potatoes, sausages and eggs should be cool enough to integrate into the mixture. I cut up the potatoes into quarters, but you can make them smaller if you choose. Shell and slice the eggs and cut up the sausages and mix them in too. Make sure everything is well coated.
You CAN serve it now, but it would make me so much happier if you had the time to cover the whole thing in plastic wrap and place into the fridge for at least one hour. Overnight is best, but at least give it some time so all the flavors can mingle. When you’re ready to serve, garnish with diced green onions and sprinkle a little paprika to make it look pretty.
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