Traditional Viennese Potato Salad

This recipe for a classic Austrian potato salad is made with beef stock and sweet mustard.

Potato Salad is THE one and only side dish to Viennese Schnitzel, but also a perfect fit to any kind of grilled meat, sausages or as part of a salad buffet.

This is my very favorite recipe for potato salad. I have made this several times now and my family loves it! We lived in Vienna for almost 20 years (kids were born there) and I am so happy to have found your site for the recipes our family misses so much.

Ada from Texas (Recipe Reviews)

Because you can prepare the potato salad well in advance, it is a good side dish if you have guests on the holidays, for example.

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• Austrian Potato Salad Recipe

Ingredients

For this Austrian Potato Salad you need the following ingredients. The exact quantities can be found in the printable recipe card below.

• Waxy potatoes (salad potatoes, side potatoes): do not use floury puree potatoes, they would kind of fall apart too much during cooking
• Bought beef stock or homemade beef soup: whenever I make beef soup myself, I freeze several portions for later use
  
  Of course, the recipe also works with vegetable soup or stock cubes
  
• Onion: I like to use red or yellow onions for this potato salad, but shallots etc. also work well.
• Kremser Senf (Traditional Austrian sweet "Kremser" mustard): this very popular Austrian mustard from the company "Mautner Markhof" is quite important to the taste of this salad. Alternatively, you can use another sweet mustard. Bavarian Weißwurst mustard can be used as a substitute as well.
  If you know of a good alternative to Kremser Senf that is available in the US, please let me know in the comments!
• Oil: a neutral oil such as corn oil or rapeseed oil is used in this recipe
• Vinegar: I like to use white wine vinegar, table vinegar, or other quite "neutral" tasting vinegar for the salad. Apple cider vinegar or something similar is possible, but has a strong fruity taste of its own, which in my opinion competes too much with the Kremser mustard.
• Chives: fresh chives taste best, but frozen is obviously more convenient
• As in many other Austrian salads, sugar rounds off the taste. If you want to save the sugar, you can also use a little more sweet mustard (it also has sugar, of course) or reduce the sugar a bit.
  
  But then please don't leave a nasty comment below that the recipe doesn't taste good! (I'm kidding, of course I'm grateful for any feedback)
• Salt: you may have to add a little more salt after the salad has cooled down, the potatoes absorb quite a lot of salt
• Pepper: at taste
• ground caraway seeds: can also be left out if you're not as big of a fan
• Garlic, as pictured below, is optional and not really necessary unless you have a very lightly flavored beef soup, in which case I recommend it!

Instructions

Peel the potatoes and cut into slices about 2 mm thick. The quickest way to do this is with the grater insert of your kitchen machine. I use a hand grater. So that I don't injure myself when grating, I only grate about three quarters of each potato and cut the rest into thin slices with a knife.

You can of course just use a knife. The slices look prettiest when they are cut diagonally or lengthwise.

Bring about 2 liters of water to a boil and add salt. Add the potato slices and cook until tender, about 7 minutes.

Alternatively, cook whole potatoes in their skins: of course, the salad also works with potatoes that are cooked whole in their skins. Then the cooking time increases depending on the size of the potatoes. However, the potatoes should be added to the salad dressing while they are still hot or warm in order to better absorb the aroma. In this case you have to cut the potatoes into slices with a knife. If you grate them, they would fall apart.

Salad dressing

Mix the cold soup with the mustard, vinegar and oil and all the spices in a large bowl. You want the sugar and salt to dissolve in the liquid.

Chop the onion very finely and mix in. (Optional, press the garlic clove as well and mix into the dressing.)

Add the potato slices into the dressing while they are still warm/hot:

The cooked potatoes should be mixed with the dressing while they are still hot (or at least warm). This will help them absorb the flavor of the dressing.

Now, the salad should cool down for about 1 hour. (In the fridge or outside in cold temperatures.)

During this time, the potatoes also absorb a lot of the liquid. Before serving, you may add more salt and some liquid, for example oil, if the potatoes have absorbed a lot of liquid.