Add One Ingredient To Potato Salad For A Spicy Kick (Hint: It's A Condiment In Your Chinese Takeout)

It may be sacrilege to say, but your traditional mayo-based American potato salad could often use a spicy ingredient to plus it up. It's not that creamy potato salad is bad; it's just that it's often one-note. While you might get a little vinegar or pickle to balance out the flavor and give it a little brightness, the mayo-heavy mixture is just so overwhelmingly rich that it dominates everything else. That's why you need at least one ingredient that is bracing and spicy enough to stand up to it, and one great option is hot mustard.

That's right, those little packets of sinus-clearing mustard that come in your Chinese takeout bags are the perfect addition to potato salad. The spicy kick of hot mustard cuts through the fat of mayo and single-handedly turns a heavy dish into something crisp and almost refreshing. It doesn't actually alter the flavor of potato salad that much, because hot mustard brings more sensation than pure flavor, but that's part of what makes it great. You keep the classic taste people like, but make it that much more crushable, with a pleasant burn that will keep you coming back for more.

It's also as easy as substitutions get. Most creamy potato salad recipes already have a little mustard in there for all the reasons listed above, so you just need to swap in the exact same amount of hot mustard. It's so much more pungent than yellow mustard, or even Dijon, that it transforms the whole dish.

Of course you don't actually need to wait for Chinese leftovers to make this potato salad. The same kind of Chinese hot mustard can be found at the grocery store, often in the Asian section instead of with the other mustards. But believe it or not, hot mustard is also maybe the single easiest condiment to make yourself at home. Hot mustard is just ground mustard plus water. That's it. The heat from mustard seeds is so intense already that all it needs is water to help it bloom. Sometimes Chinese takeout versions also have additions like rice vinegar or sugar for a little more flavor, but those will only temper the heat, not add to it.

To make hot mustard, you can use store-bought hot mustard powder, like Colman's (a mix of white and brown mustard seeds), or you can grind brown seeds, which are the hotter of the two and the ones used in most Chinese hot mustard. Simply mix an equal amount of the mustard powder and cold water, and let it sit. The heat will quickly develop as the mustard hydrates, and will actually be at its spiciest around 15 minutes after being mixed, and then slowly dissipate. This lets you taste as you go and wait until the mustard hits your ideal heat. A dash of vinegar can also be added to preserve the heat for a bit longer, but since this is going right into your potato salad, it isn't really necessary. It's a quick mix that will change the way you think of creamy potato salad.