BBQ Across America

Here is a wonderful recipe for a potato salad from our friends at Preemptive Karma

BBQ Potato Salad - No Mayo!
I just made this this morning for a picnic I'm going to this afternoon. It occured to me a week or two ago that BBQ sauce might be good in potato salad (it is!!). So I started looking for recipes and found a small handful of them, two of which I liked and the following draws inspiration from those two but also diverges significantly enough that I'm going to pass it off as my own.

Ingredients
5 lb bag of Red Potatoes, diced
12 slices crispy Bacon (preferably applewood-smoked), chopped
6 hard-boiled Eggs, finely chopped
1 small Walla Walla Sweet Onion, finely diced
1 cup BBQ sauce (I prefer Sweet Baby Ray's original)
1 lb container of Sour Cream (about 2 cups)
2 tablespoons spicy (brown) Mustard
Sea Salt
Black Pepper
Smoked Paprika (optional but I used it)

Directions
I have yet to find the perfect way to boil potatoes for potato salad. I've seen descriptions of a number of fundamentally different ways that are supposed to work flawlessly. Either they don't or I'm not doing it right - probably the later. In any case, I use red-skinned potatoes because they hold their shape much better than other varieties, and I also like to chill them in the fridge before cubing them and making the potato salad because being chilled also helps them hold their shape... especially if you've slightly overcooked them and are worried about ending up with lumpy mashed potatoes.

Boil and cube the potatoes as you see fit. Other than that, just combine the ingredients in a large bowl. It's not rocket surgery. However I do find it easier to mix everything BUT the potatoes together first and then mix the cubed potatoes into it.

That said, this is also the first time that I've ever substituted sour cream for the more typical mayonaise in a potato salad. I like it! And I also like the fact that there isn't a drop of oil in this salad. Mayo, as you know, is mostly oil & egg whites with some flavoring. Future potato salad experiments will likely involve substituting only part of the mayo with sour cream - just to see what that's like. Supposedly the sour cream makes the salad creamier in texture.