Elevate Potato Salad With Your Favorite Chopped Olives

Potato salad is one of the most dependable sides you have in your cooking arsenal, but it can be easy to fall back on basic recipes. A simple potato salad with mayo or vinegar is filling enough to round out a light meal and mild enough in flavor to pair with almost anything. Plus, if you have potatoes in your fridge and absolutely anything in your pantry, you can probably make it. But potato salad can be so much more than a functional utility player. There is actually a whole world of potato salad styles out there to experiment with, some of which are packed with so much flavor they can act as a meal by themselves. You don't even need a recipe to get there either. Every type of potato salad takes extremely well-to-the-fly additions to round out its flavor and make it more filling and one of the easiest ingredients that can upgrade your favorite potato salad is chopped olives.

As a combo that involves starchy and potatoes, and usually rich additions like mayonnaise or sour cream, potato salad falls on the heavy side of the food scale, and benefits from small additions that can lighten it up and cut through the fat a bit. Olives are little bombs of briny flavor that contribute both salt and acid to a dish, something a lot of potato salads desperately need. Even vinegar-based salads will benefit from the preserved depth of flavor and meatiness a good olive adds.

There are a lot of different olives out there that range from mild to pungent and sweet to smoky, but even if you are working with some of the more common and popular olives on the market you'll have some versatile choices. If you are making a mayo-based or creamy option like a classic Southern potato salad, you'll want an olive that's punchy to counteract the richness and has a strong flavor to stand up to the heavy dressing. Two well-known black olives are perfect candidates. Kalamata olives are sold almost everywhere and have a complex, strong taste that can be both savory and fruity. You can also try a Niçoise olive, a French option that is very briny, a little bitter, and sour — all things that will make a creamy potato salad far more unique and satisfying.

If you prefer a vinegar-based or lighter French-style potato salad, rich green olives are a nice addition. The go-to would be one of the stars of the olive world, Italy's Castelvetrano, which are deep green, thick, and meaty. They have a more buttery flavor that will bring some olive oil-like richness to more tart potato salads. Spanish Manzanilla olives can fulfill a similar role but with some more savory smoky and nutty notes. Best of all, after you fill out your potato salad with those chopped olives, you'll have some leftovers to snack on.