Russian Salad – Argentine Holiday Side Dish
Potato, carrot and peas bound with good mayonnaise — in Argentina the inseparable side dish at Christmas and New Year, always next to the vitel toné and the matambre.
Two rules decide the result, and both are about temperature and size. The cubes are cut all the same size (1 cm) so they cook evenly. And everything has to be completely cold before the mayonnaise goes in: stirred into warm vegetables it splits, and the salad turns oily instead of creamy.
Ingredients
- 4 medium potatoes
- 3 carrots
- 150 g peas (fresh, frozen or tinned and drained), about 1 cup
- 300 g mayonnaise (homemade is better)
- Salt and pepper
- Chopped parsley to finish (optional)
Method
- 1
Peel the potatoes and the carrots and cut them into even 1 cm cubes: a uniform size means everything cooks the same and the salad looks tidy.
- 2
Boil them separately in salted water (the carrot takes a little longer), until they are tender but still firm when you pierce them. Overcooked potato means a stodgy salad.
- 3
If the peas are fresh or frozen, blanch them for 2 minutes. If tinned, just drain them well.
- 4
Drain everything and spread it on a dish so the steam escapes. Cool completely in the fridge: mixing while hot splits the mayonnaise.
- 5
Bring the cold vegetables together with the mayonnaise a little at a time, to the creaminess you want. Season with salt and pepper.
- 6
Rest for 1 hour in the fridge before serving, dusted with parsley. From one day to the next it is better still.