Rosanne Cash’s Potato Salad Is the Only One for Me

I was just texting my friend who moved away from our shared city of Los Angeles, about making Rosanne Cash’s Potato Salad. He and I have probably eaten roughly 70 pounds of potato salad over the course of our friendship.

“Is there dill in it?” he asked, even though he knew the answer. (Hello, of course there’s dill in it!) In the imaginary Netflix documentary where investigators painstakingly comb through our text thread, you’ll see an endless scroll featuring years’ worth of memes and photos of just fried dill pickles, dill deviled eggs, dill pickle tuna salad, dill dressing, dill popcorn, and the fresh dill weed and dill pickle spears packed into this salad.

“He seemed so nice… I never imagined he would eat a sweet (gulp) cornichon,” I’ll say in season two episode one, while holding a jar of kosher dill chips as a briny tear rolls down my cheek and into a dirty pickle martini (He would have wanted that for me).

Why I Love Rosanne Cash’s Potato Salad

Rosanne Cash does for a classic potato salad what her dad, Johnny Cash, did for music, and makes a classic really sing. It’s your standard mix of hard-boiled eggs, red potatoes, and onions that are altogether chewy, savory, comforting, and dolled up with a whole lot of creamy mayo dressing.

Crisp celery adds a welcome, bitter crunch, and fresh dill lends licorice-like grassiness, but the tangy, bursting pickle chunks totally sell it for me. To me, nothing reps a summer barbecue or potluck better than a great potato dish—and this Dijon-spiked stunner’s primed for placing on the buffet just to watch it disappear. With this potato salad tucked in your lasagna lugger, Aunt Susan better watch out with her tater tot casserole, ‘cuz you’re coming for her.

My Tips for Making Rosanne Cash’s Potato Salad

I love not having to peel potatoes for this. Just remove any stiff stems or sprouts that survived the boiling water.

Season everything: your potato water, your dressing, and the completed salad. I added lots of extra salt, pepper, more fresh dill, and even two tablespoons of pickle juice from the jar. (I also used all the dressing to quench three pounds of thirsty potatoes.)

It doesn’t matter how neatly your hard-boiled eggs peel, since the eggs will be chopped. I covered mine in cold water, brought them to a boil, simmered for seven minutes, and peeled them immediately. Breaking news: the secret to perfectly peeled hard-boiled eggs is not needing perfectly peeled hard-boiled eggs.

The recipe suggests cooling your potatoes in the fridge overnight so the structure stiffens and they get easier to cut, but I got a similar effect by draining my potatoes and popping them in the fridge for a couple of hours.

Good things come to those who wait… 30 minutes for the tossed salad to chill in the fridge. Then, the potato party’s on.