Jimbo's Potato Salad

My dad's potato salad is a Hellmann's recipe.

Not a family heirloom from a long-lost cookbook. Not a recipe his grandmother brought from somewhere. The recipe came on a little peel-off booklet attached to the Hellmann's mayonnaise jar at some point in the '90s.

But it became the potato salad.

Here's how a jar recipe becomes a family recipe. My dad decided to try it for a family BBQ. He made one swap. The original calls for a full cup of mayo. He cut it to three-quarters and added a quarter cup of sour cream. The texture changed. The tang shifted. Everyone loved it, especially his mother-in-law. And it became Jim's potato salad.

My parents saved the booklet. The swap, they just remembered.

It became the potato salad we had at every cookout for the next 30 years. The one we made for the Fourth of July, for the family BBQs, for the random Tuesday in August when corn was cheap and we wanted to grill something.

It's the recipe my mom can make from memory. The one that lives in my head because I watched him make it for thirty years.

He's not here anymore. But at every family gathering, the question is still "can you bring Jim's potato salad?" That matters.

The recipes worth keeping aren't the rare ones. They're the ones you make over and over.

That's what worth keeping looks like. The recipes worth keeping aren't the rare ones. They're the ones you make over and over. The ones modified once with a small swap that made them yours. The ones that get into a family's bones through repetition.

The recipe

Jim's version. Adapted from the Hellmann's jar booklet.

Ingredients

• 2 lbs Yukon gold or russet potatoes (about 4 cups cooked and cubed)
• ¾ cup Hellmann's Real Mayonnaise
• ¼ cup sour cream (this is the swap)
• 2 tablespoons vinegar (white or apple cider)
• 1½ teaspoons salt
• 1 teaspoon sugar
• ¼ teaspoon black pepper
• 1 cup chopped celery
• ½ cup chopped onion
• 2 hard-boiled eggs, chopped

Instructions

1. Boil potatoes in salted water until fork-tender, about 15-20 minutes.
2. Drain and let cool until just warm.
3. Peel (if russet) and cut into 1-inch chunks.
4. In a large bowl, whisk together mayonnaise, sour cream, vinegar, salt, sugar, and pepper.
5. Add potatoes, celery, onion, and eggs. Toss gently until everything is coated.
6. Cover and refrigerate at least 4 hours, preferably overnight. The flavors need time to come together.
7. Taste before serving. Adjust salt if needed.

Print your own family recipes (coming soon)

This recipe is part of a new series we're calling Binder Originals. The family recipes that don't have URLs. The ones written on cards, clipped from jars, passed down by hand. The ones worth keeping that you can't paste into a recipe-to-print service today.

We're building the ability to upload your own non-internet recipes and format them the same way Kitchen Book formats internet recipes, with a template designed specifically for family heirloom recipes. Handwriting-forward. Recipe-card aesthetic. Made for the binder.

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