German Potato Salad Without Mayonnaise

A traditional southern German potato salad doesn’t include mayonnaise. It has a simple oil and vinegar dressing with a little onion, a lot of mustard, and hard boiled eggs. Some are made with bacon or schmalz, pork fat, but this is a vegetarian version and how I’ve made it for decades now.

I grew up eating this kind of potato salad (the really traditional way – my mother is from Hessen) and it’s such a great dish. The potatoes are mixed with the dressing while they’re still hot so they really soak up the vinegar and mustard, break apart a little, and form a starchy dressing that is absolutely delicious. While I do love a northern-style potato salad with mayonnaise, there’s nothing like a good warm potato salad.

Some people will add broth to the salad along with the oil and vinegar, but my mother never does and I don’t either. It’s important to use the right kind of potatoes and a good mustard for this recipe. Please, no hot dog mustard.

I don’t use affiliate links. Any links you see here are to other recipes or related information, not paid links.

Ingredients You’ll Need and Why

You need just seven ingredients for this potato salad. I’ve tried to develop this version in a way that’s accessible to people outside of Germany, using common ingredients. These are my notes from recipe testing – and a lifetime of making this recipe – and you can find the full recipe card with complete measurements and instructions below.

• Potatoes: choose small waxy potatoes, sometimes called salad potatoes. If you’re not sure which to buy ask a grocery store worker or, even better, buy them from a farmer’s market and ask the grower directly. If you’re growing your own potatoes, common good varieties for salad are Annabelle, Linda, and Charlotte.
• Eggs: freshly boiled or leftover hard boiled eggs, it doesn’t matter. Make sure they are hard boiled, though, and don’t have a soft yolk.
• Dill: for the best results use good fresh dill, but in a pinch frozen will be fine. Other soft herbs can replace dill, like chives or parsley. Herbs are typically used as a garnish in old-fashioned German potato salad recipes but a good amount of dill adds a real freshness that’s too good to pass up.
• Mustard: use either Dijon or mittelscharf mustard, not yellow hotdog mustard. Graham is terribly picky about mustard so we only ever have Dijon in the house.
• Vinegar: either white wine vinegar or apple cider vinegar. Plain white vinegar is too strong.
• Oil: I always use olive oil, but a neutral oil is more typical, so use whichever you prefer.
• Onion: use a standard yellow onion for a stronger onion flavour or choose a mild sweet onion if you prefer it to be more subtle.

How to Make Potato Salad

Optionally add about 200 ml of hot vegetable broth to the potatoes along with the oil and vinegar, if you’d like a very soft potato salad. If you plan to store and serve the salad cold, added broth can help prevent it from getting too hard when chilled.

Step 1: boil the potatoes in plenty of salted water until fork-soft, then drain and let the potatoes dry in the hot pot. Make sure they’re completely dry and all of the water has steamed off before continuing.

Step 2: add the oil, vinegar, mustard, and finely chopped onion to the hot potatoes. It will seem like too much vinaigrette but the potatoes will soak it up. If you are adding vegetable broth, now is the time to do that.

Step 3: mix in the sliced hard boiled eggs. The yolks will break apart, that’s normal. I always mix in the pot so that the salad can be transferred to a clean serving bowl, but you can mix in a bowl if you’d like.

Step 4: add the dill and serve warm or at room temperature. Make sure to taste the salad before serving and season as needed.

Expert Tips for the Best Salad

• Mix warm, serve warm: this is best served immediately, when the salad is still warm. It’s almost as good at room temperature but the potatoes are a little hard when chilled. See note regarding vegetable broth.
• Dry the potatoes: just like with mashed potatoes, you want to let the potatoes dry off after boiling. For potato salad, that’s to avoid watering down the vinaigrette and making the salad taste bland.
• Break down the yolks: the egg yolks will blend right in to the salad, and you’ll end up with the whites visible but the yolks mixing in with the dressing. That’s part of how the salad works and you don’t want to serve the eggs sliced on top of the salad or something like that. The yolks are meant to mix in.
• Skins optional: I never peel potatoes. I think it’s a waste of time and a waste of good food. Use a good thin-skinned potato and keep the peel on for this recipe if you can, or peel if preferred.

More German Recipes

• Carrot Apple Salad – a very traditional easy salad that’s good almost year-round, this is something I make for my oma all the time.
• Vegetarian Split Pea Soup – a meat-free version of German split pea soup, with dried peas, carrots, potatoes, and parsley.
• Kartoffelpuffer (German Potato Pancakes) – proper homemade potato pancakes.
• German Pancakes – thin pancakes, almost like a French crêpe but a little thicker and heartier, with a high proportion of eggs.