I Tried Julia Child’s and Ree Drummond’s Potato Salads—This Is the One I’m Making All Summer Long

My summer plans include eating grilled sausages and potato salad at least once a week through Labor Day. While I love a German-style potato salad, my family requested a more traditional, mayo-dressed potato salad, and I didn’t yet have a favorite recipe.

After a little bit of back-and-forth, I determined that I really needed to test out two different styles of classic potato salad to find a favorite. My search yielded some enticing contenders, but I ultimately landed on two well-loved recipes from famous chefs Ree Drummond and Julia Child.

At first bite, this “versus” might feel a bit like pitting American-style potato salad against French potato salad, but both Drummond and Child have distinctions that make their recipes unique. Here’s what I found when making their two potato salads side-by-side and who I ultimately crowned the winner. 

Ree Drummond’s Perfect Potato Salad vs. Julia Child’s Simple Potato Salad 

Unsurprisingly, Ree Drummond’s Perfect Potato Salad feeds a crowd! Her recipe starts with FIVE pounds of russet potatoes that are quartered, boiled, and then mashed or riced before being dressed with lots of mayo and a good dose of yellow mustard.

This potato salad is finished with chopped green onions, hard-boiled eggs, crumbled bacon, and sweet gherkins. I appreciated that Drummond encourages adding more mayo and a splash of pickle juice if your potato salad is tasting a little dry.

Julia Child’s Simple Potato Salad starts with peeled and sliced Yukon gold potatoes in a more reasonable volume. The potatoes are boiled in heavily salted water until tender, then drained, dressed with champagne vinegar, and left to partially cool.

Child dressed her potatoes with a mixture of mayo and sour cream. She called for adding a little reserved potato cooking liquid to the dressing. Chopped celery, shallots, and cornichons are mixed into the salad along with fresh dill and chives. This recipe calls for adding hard-boiled eggs, celery, and shallots just before serving, but after chilling. 

My Winner: Julia Child’s Potato Salad

While there are a few major differences between Ree Drummond’s and Julia Child’s potato salad recipes, they are more alike in flavor than they are different. Drummond’s recipe gets tang from the mustard and pickle juice, Child’s from vinegar, sour cream, and tart pickles. Both have a crunchy component—Ree’s crisped bacon, Julia’s celery.

You also clearly taste how each chef’s recipe would pair beautifully with other dishes they’re known for. The sweetness of Drummond’s recipe is the perfect side dish for smoky Texas BBQ, while Child’s bright, herby potato salad would be as lovely with steamed fish as it would with grilled sausages. 

What made Julia’s recipe a winner for me came down to two things: the ease of her potato prep method and the creaminess of her dressing. I love my potato ricer for mashed potatoes, but I didn’t love the texture of the riced potatoes in Drummond’s potato salad—it just didn’t have enough body for me.

Child’s genius addition of the starchy potato water and sour cream to her dressing made her potato salad creamier, but it also helped the potato salad taste well seasoned, even after chilling. While I’ll be making some small adjustments to Julia’s recipe (a little less dill for my husband), hers is the potato salad I’ll be making all summer long.