I Found the Red Hot & Blue Potato Salad Recipe I’ve Been Craving for 30 Years

There are some foods you forget five minutes after you eat them.

And then apparently there is potato salad you remember for 30 years.

We were invited to a Labor Day weekend BBQ today, and when I asked my friend what I could bring, she said, “A side dish.”

Easy enough.

They’re making burgers and steaks. Someone is bringing mac and cheese. There will be roasted squash, corn salad, dips, chips—all the things you want at an end-of-summer BBQ.

And for some reason, my brain immediately went:

Potato salad.

But not just any potato salad.

Thirty-ish years ago, when we lived in Texas, we used to go to a BBQ restaurant called Red Hot & Blue.

It wasn’t fancy. It was the kind of place we’d pop into for lunch—casual, a little quirky, with funny pig artwork and sayings all over the walls.

And boy, was it good.

They had the BEST pulled pork sandwiches. Real Texas BBQ. The kind I still haven’t been able to find here in California.

But the thing I remember just as clearly?

The potato salad.

I can still picture the restaurant. I can still remember sitting there eating lunch. And somehow, after all these years, I could still remember exactly what that potato salad tasted like.

So when my friend said, “Bring a side dish,” my brain went straight there.

And of course, with the help of my friend ChatGPT I found the recipe. 

The secret? Red potatoes with the skins left on. Hard-boiled eggs. Green onions. Mayo. Celery seed. Salt.

That’s pretty much it. It's basic. Some might say plain. I say deeeeelish.

The recipe said it tastes even better if you make it a day ahead, which was perfect. I made it yesterday so all those flavors could hang out together overnight.

I made only one little change: I added some finely diced celery because I like a little crunch in my potato salad.

And obviously, I had to taste it before putting it in the refrigerator.

One bite.

OH. MY. GOSH.

There it was.

It tasted exactly like the potato salad I remembered eating at Red Hot & Blue all those years ago.

Thirty years disappeared in one bite.

And that got me thinking about how incredible food memories are.

It might be your grandmother’s cookies. Your mom’s casserole. The appetizer you always ordered at the restaurant you went to when you were first married. Or that weird thing your family makes every Thanksgiving that nobody else would understand.

Sometimes a recipe isn’t really about the recipe at all.

It’s about where you were.

Who you were with.

What life looked like then.

One bite and suddenly you’re somewhere else.

Today I’ll take that bowl of potato salad to a Labor Day weekend BBQ in California—a recipe that somehow followed me all the way from a little BBQ joint in Texas 30 years ago.

We’ll eat too much, laugh, talk and enjoy the unofficial end of summer with friends.

And who knows?

Maybe someday one of us will remember something we ate today.

Food has a funny way of doing that. ❤️

Red Hot & Blue-Inspired Potato Salad

Ingredients

4 lbs. red potatoes, skins on

4 large hard-boiled eggs

½ cup finely sliced green onion tops

1¼ cups mayonnaise (Hellmann's or Best Foods Mayo)

1¾ tsp. celery seed

1¾ tsp. kosher salt (start with a little less and adjust to taste)

My addition: 1/4 c. finely diced celery, because I like the crunch

Directions

1. Steam the potatoes until just tender. Steaming instead of boiling helps keep the texture right.
2. Let them cool enough to handle, leaving the skins on.
3. Cut the potatoes and hard-boiled eggs into bite-sized pieces.
4. Mix the mayonnaise, celery seed, salt, green onions and diced celery.
5. Gently fold everything together.
6. Refrigerate for several hours—or, even better, overnight.

Then take a bite and see if it reminds you of somewhere you’ve been before.

ps. I made half the recipe to take to the party. The full recipe will fill a bathtub. 

Now I want to know: What food can you still taste from 20 or 30 years ago? ❤️