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German Potato Salad No. 1
6 medium sized potatoes 1/4 lb. fat bacon 1 small onion 2 teaspoons salt 1/4 teaspoon black pepper 1/2 cup hot vinegar 1/2 cup hot water 2 tablespoons salad oil Boil the potatoes and after draining set them over the fire to dry. Peel and slice while warm. Cover at once with dressing made as follows: Cut the bacon into small dice, put in frying pan over a slow fire. Shred the onion into a large bowl, add salt, pepper, hot vinegar and hot water. When the fat is a light brown color and the bacon dice well crisped, add the salad oil and pour it into the vinegar and onion, turning it slowly at first lest it spatter. Serve on crisp lettuce leaves, garnish with pickled beets. Best served as soon as made.
A hot bacon-and-vinegar potato salad in the German style, dressed while the potatoes are still warm. The method is sound as written; only a few details need translating.
- Dress the potatoes warmThis is the hinge. Warm potatoes absorb the vinegar dressing; cold ones simply get coated and the salad tastes flat. Slice and dress immediately after the brief drying step.
- "Set them over the fire to dry"After draining, return the pan to low heat for a minute or two and shake it so the surface moisture steams off. This firms the slices and helps them take up dressing.
- Fat baconA quarter pound of streaky bacon or slab bacon, cut into small dice, yields roughly 3 to 4 tablespoons of rendered fat. Sliced supermarket bacon works, though it renders less; a piece of unsliced slab bacon is closer to the original.
- Slow fireLow to medium-low heat; expect this to take some time, perhaps ten to fifteen minutes. Rendering slowly gets the fat out before the dice brown; high heat scorches the outside and leaves the interior tough.
- Pouring hot fat into liquidThe caution about spattering is real. Take the pan off the heat, pour in a thin stream while stirring, and keep your face back — hot fat meeting vinegar and water will spit.
- Potato varietyWaxy potatoes — Yukon Gold, red-skinned, fingerling — hold their slices. Russets will crumble into the dressing, which is not what this salad wants.
- YieldSix medium potatoes serve four to six as a side. The salt is on the generous side; taste after dressing and hold back some if your bacon is heavily cured.
- TimingThe note that it is best served as soon as made is accurate. This salad is at its best warm; refrigerating it dulls the vinegar and stiffens the bacon fat.
German-style potato salad -- warm, sharp with vinegar, bound with bacon fat rather than mayonnaise -- reached American cookbooks largely through German immigrant communities in the Midwest and Pennsylvania, and by the early twentieth century it was familiar enough to be printed under the name alone. It travels well: potatoes and slab bacon keep without ice, and the dressing is made in a single pan. The "No. 1" in the title indicates the book carried more than one version.