This potato salad is stellar on both the nutritional and flavour fronts.
It’s the perfect balance of herby-ness, umami, creamy mayo and nutty spuds with a salty kick from the capers.
Use it as a side for pretty much anything.
Nutrition note: Watercress is one of the most nutrient-dense veggies, except we don’t really eat much of it.
This recipe incorporates quite a large amount thanks to the reduction in volume achieved via chopping it finely.
A bag of watercress turns into a few tablespoons when shredded.
It’s utterly packed to the brim with feel-good vitamins & minerals.
Similarly, herbs get you a lot of nutrition points too.
Here is a small overview of the nutrient content:
Watercress - Vitamin C, Vitamin A, calcium, magnesium, folate, Vitamin B6, iron, antioxidants
Parsley - iron, Vitamin C, calcium, potassium, Vitamin A, biotin, folate, antioxidants
A couple of extra nutrition notes:
- A large proportion of Vitamin C is lost from food with cooking so this recipe capitalises on Vitamin C containing watercress and parsley by keeping them both raw.
- Cold potatoes (cooked & cooled), like the ones used in this potato salad are a superfuel for gut microbes. In a nutshell, when fully cooled, the carbohydrates in potatoes turn into resistant starches. We can’t digest these too well but our gut microbes thrive on it. Hence cold potatoes are fab for gut health.
Ingredients
300g cooked baby/ salad potatoes, I used the anya variety, left to cool completely.
30g watercress
10g parsley
5g other herbs (I used chive & oregano but anything goes)
2-3 tbsp of good quality mayo, I used Stokes mayo
10 giant capers - don’t skip this, it adds all the umami
A generous amount of sea salt and black pepper - don’t be stingey, it needs seasoning well
Method:
Put the watercress and herbs onto a chopping board.
Finely shred them until they reduce in volume by half. Here is a short video of how I did this.
Slice your potatoes in half. I sliced them length-ways because the herby goodness sticks to them more efficiently this way.
Roughly slice the capers.
In a large bowl, combine the spuds, herbs, mayo and capers.
Season this really well with sea salt and black pepper.
Stir it really well to combine it. You want to coat the spuds well.
That’s it.
Finished.
Enjoy.