Perfect Potato Salad with Quinoa

I had a wonderful time with my family over spring break, but it sure is good to be back home and back to normal life and a regular schedule again. One of the things I missed the most was eating healthy, home cooked meals. It gets harder and harder to eat processed-white-flour-packed-foods when your body is used to the flavor and nutrition of grains. But even after just three days of home cooked meals again I'm starting to feel back to my normal self.

One thing that I've discovered that I love about cooking from scratch is that you can change a recipe up to make it healthier with very little effort and without sacrificing any of the original recipe's deliciousness. This potato salad is a great example of this. I added cooked white quinoa to the salad, thus upping the nutrition by a lot because white quinoa is a perfect protein and very healthy (If you're interested in learning more about it, I devoted a whole post to white quinoa last year). White quinoa is the perfect grain to disguise in potato salad because it blends in so well and no one will even know it's there.

I'm excited to share with you this recipe that you can make in your pressure cooker. I wrote this recipe up for the pressure cooker, but don't worry if you don't have one, you can still cook all the ingredients on the stove and combine them to make a very delicious potato salad. Spring is here (despite the snow I woke up to this morning) and summer is close on it's way! This is a delicious recipe that you can serve with a barbecue or picnic this spring or summer. I brought it to a barbecue my family had over Easter weekend and everyone loved it. Enjoy.

Perfect Potato Salad with Quinoa
Printable Recipe

*Serves 10-12

*This is a pressure cooker version of the recipe, but you can easily make it without a pressure cooker by cooking the white quinoa, potatoes and hard boiled eggs on the stove. 

INGREDIENTS:
Salad:
10 eggs
1/2 Cup white quinoa
5 lbs. potatoes (I used about 10 large Russets, but you can use other varieties)
1 Cup sliced olives

Dressing:
2 Cups mayonnaise (Light mayo works fine)
2/3 Cup buttermilk
1 1/2 tsp. dried parsley
1 tsp. salt
1 1/2 tsp. minced dried onions
1 1/2 tsp. garlic salt
1 tsp. seasoned salt
1 tsp. ground black pepper
2 Tbsp. yellow mustard

DIRECTIONS:

Hard boiled eggs (this step can be done ahead of time):

I like to hard boil my eggs according to this method in the pressure cooker because the eggs are easy to peel and come out perfect every time. Place the metal trivet that comes with the pressure cooker on the bottom of the pressure cooker. Add about a cup of water and place a few canning lids on the trivet (this is to keep the eggs from bumping into each other, but you may not need very many since you will be cooking 10 eggs). Arrange the eggs in and around the lids. Heat up the pressure cooker until it reaches low pressure and then cook for 6 minutes. Allow the pressure to go down naturally and then immediately remove the eggs and cool them in ice water to stop the cooking process. Let pressure release naturally and then cool and refrigerate the eggs. 

Cooked Quinoa (this step can be done ahead of time):

Add 1/2 Cup white quinoa to the pressure cooker along with 1 Cup of water. Pressure on high for 6 minutes, then do a quick release. Cool and refrigerate. 

Potatoes (this step can be done ahead of time):

Peel the potatoes and place on top of metal trivet in pressure cooker. Add 2 Cups of water to cooker, lock the lid in place and cook on high pressure for 6 minutes. Naturally release the pressure, then cool and refrigerate potatoes.

For the salad, dice the cooked potatoes into bite sized pieces and add to a large serving bowl. Dice the hard boiled eggs and combine with the potatoes. Add to the bowl the chopped olives and the cooked and cooled quinoa. Then toss potato salad ingredients together until evenly distributed. Combine the dressing ingredients in a quart sized canning jar or a blender and shake or blend until combined. Pour dressing onto potato salad until the correct consistency is found. Refrigerate potato salad at least 2 hours to combine flavors or until ready to serve.

Recipe Source: Adapted from Mel's Kitchen Cafe

This week I'll be linking to some of these link parties.