The Little Known Brand That Makes The Best Store-Bought Potato Salad

While potato salads may be a popular choice for barbecues and cookouts, it has its place in the side dish hall of fame year-round. Easy, filling, and delicious, potato salads can be an all-inclusive team effort in the kitchen or a quick pitstop at the grocery store on your way to the in-laws. We recently sat down to rank eight store-bought potato salad brands and discovered that Häns Kissle's potato salad is the best of the best.

It's not flashy and it doesn't have a massive social media following, but Häns Kissle's potato salad is the kind of rich, classic potato salad that you'd be proud to bring to the dinner party. The potatoes are perfectly cooked, neither too hard nor disintegrating with a single swipe of the fork, and the mayo-based dressing complements the hearty chunks perfectly. There's a hint of sweetness, but a healthy cracking of black pepper and notes of apple cider vinegar balance it so that all of the flavors melt in your mouth. The recipe is so distractingly good that you won't even realize it doesn't include mustard.

In the grand scheme of potato salad brands, Häns Kissle is lesser known, but that doesn't dull the quality of its foods. The company was created in 1984 (a similarly special year for rare bourbons) and, at first, only sold directly to a local grocery chain in the New England area. Häns Kissle got the formula down to a science when it came to creating fresh, high-quality deli salads with the help of certified chefs and an experienced culinary team. What began as a small business selling products to a private company in a 30,000-square-foot processing facility has grown into a more widely distributed product made out of a 112,000-square-foot facility.

Beyond a killer potato salad, Häns Kissle offers a plethora of other products and similarly sized deli salads. There's the Aegean Greek pasta salad, the cheese tortellini salad, the elbow macaroni salad, the tri-color twist pasta salad, and even several varieties of coleslaw (here's where the name coleslaw came from, by the way). The deli salads are available in sizes as small as three ounces or as large as bulk salads up to 10-pounds, plus everything in between. Prepared foods are also in Häns Kissle's repertoire, with entrees, side dishes, dips, spreads, and desserts aplenty.