This vegan potato salad is guaranteed to make you the star of your next summer BBQ or potluck.
It feels funny to write that because, well, I used to hate potato salad. The potato salad I grew up on was dowsed in gloopy mayonnaise, served out of industrial-sized plastic buckets at school events and fundraisers. Yuck.
The secret to this salad? Starting with a tahini-yogurt dressing, then cranking the flavor wayyyy up with capers, mustard, red onions and chives, heaps of dill, tons of lemon, and jalapeños.
So if you, too, are haunted by the mayo-drenched memories of picnics past, this is the recipe for you, I promise.
Potato salad perfection, achieved ✅
This video was a hit over on YouTube: over 160k views, nearly 9k likes, and major potato salad love in the comments:
“I rarely comment on recipe videos but this potato salad is absolutely divine. The ingredients combine to something so much greater than its parts. This is my go to potato salad now and I can’t wait to have it again.” ~@simplicitykills
Ingredient notes
- Red potatoes: A waxy, thin skinned potato works best here. Their small size means they cook quickly and hold their shape well. See the Tips section for exactly why these are my preferred potato for potato salad (as well as alternatives!).
- Tahini: AKA mayonnaise replacement #1! Tahini adds a creamy and slightly nutty flavor to the potato salad, enhancing its richness and depth. My preferred brands are Soom Tahini, Seed + Mill, Beirut Tahini Sesame Paste, and Baron’s.
- Plain, unsweetened coconut yogurt: AKA mayonnaise replacement #2! Coconut yogurt contributes luscious creaminess with delightful tang. Use the best variety you can find, as it’s a key ingredient. My favorite coconut yogurts are thick, creamy, and tangy: Cocojune, Culina, Coconut Cult, and GT’s CocoYo.
Substitute: If you can’t find a good-quality plain coconut yogurt, you can use vegan sour cream (I like Kite Hill Foods and Tofutti). If using sour cream, you’ll likely need to use less lemon juice and salt.
- Mustard: Dijon mustard and yellow mustard combine to add sharpness and even more tang—critical for balancing the richness of the other ingredients.
- Celery seeds: These contribute a subtle, ever-so-slight bitterness along with a pleasant herbal note.
- Fresh dill: Ahh, the freshness and vibrancy that can only come from fresh herbs! If you’re not a fan of dill, substitute with flat-leaf parsley.
- Capers: These little guys punch up the flavor profile with their briny tang!
Substitute: No capers? Finely chop 1 dill pickle for the capers; use 1 to 2 tablespoons of the pickle juice instead of the caper brine.
- Jalapeño (optional): You know me—I love adding a little spicy kick wherever I can, and I think the heat adds to this salad’s uniqueness (my baby mouths out there, feel free to omit).
Step-by-step instructions
For a live walkthrough tutorial, check out the accompanying YouTube video. Otherwise, you can follow these steps:
- Add halved potatoes to a pot and cover with cold water; season with salt. Simmer just until tender. Drain and rest in the colander for 5 minutes to dry out.
- Meanwhile, make the dressing. Whisk together the tahini, coconut yogurt, and both mustards.
- Add in the garlic, lemon zest and juice, celery seeds, caper brine, salt and pepper. Whisk the dressing until well combined.
- Add in 1 tablespoon of the chopped dill and stir to combine.
- Coat the warm potatoes in the dressing, gently tossing.
- Add the capers, red onions, jalapeños (if using), and toss gently.
- Finish with the remaining dill and chives, and season to taste with salt and pepper.
- Serve warm or chill for at least one hour.
Tips for making this recipe
Pick small, waxy potatoes
A waxy, thin-skinned potato is best: they have the least amount of starch and keep their shape when boiled. Thin-skinned potatoes also cook more quickly—and, to make things even speedier, I use small-sized potatoes (which cook in just 8 to 12 minutes).
My favorites for potato salad: baby red potatoes, fingerling potatoes, new potatoes, peewee potatoes (a cute name for a cute spud).
If you can’t access these, you can use larger red potatoes or Yukon golds. Just make sure to cut them into chunks about the size of halved baby potatoes.
And whatever you do, don’t use russet potatoes — they’re too starchy for potato salad!
3 steps to perfectly-cooked potatoes
1. Cook potatoes in cold water and season with salt
Cooking potatoes in cold water helps them cook more evenly. They’re dense little guys and require some time to heat through—letting them come to temperature with the water allows for this. Adding them straight to boiling water can leave you with potatoes that are mushy on the outside but undercooked.
Seasoning the water with salt is essential for a rounded depth of flavor—it allows the potatoes to soak up the salted water so they’re seasoned all the way through (something you cannot achieve if you wait to salt them).
2. Don’t overcook the potatoes!
Soft potatoes are great for creamy mashed potatoes, but not for potato salad. For reference, I simmered these baby red potatoes for just 8 minutes.
Tip: To test whether the potatoes are done, insert a fork into a potato. It should give just the slightest resistance. Do NOT wait until they fall apart when forked.
3. Allow the potatoes to dry
Dressing clings better to dry potatoes, resulting in a delightfully saucy potato salad. All it takes is a 5-minute drip-dry in the colander!
Dress the potatoes while warm
Why? Warm potatoes absorb significantly more flavor from the dressing.
This is a major advantage of making a non-mayo-based potato salad—it’s totally safe to not only dress the potatoes while warm, but to serve the whole salad warm! This is my preference, in fact—I think it gives the dish a grown-up, elegant feel.
That said, if you have leftovers (or just prefer it this way), this potato salad is just as tasty chilled.
Frequently Asked Questions
This potato salad makes a wonderful addition to any barbecue, potluck, or picnic. It would be just perfect next to a veggie burger or some charred veggies hot off the grill.
It would work beautifully alongside these grilled tofu skewers. And I have a whole guide to vegan grilling for you to check out.
For a comfort food pairing, serve alongside my Crispy Baked Mac and Cheese.
And if you have my cookbook, The Vegan Instant Pot Cookbook, this potato salad would be FABULOUS with the Baked Beans in Chapter 2.
Sure, if you don’t care to serve it warm, you can certainly make it ahead. It will stay good in an airtight container in the fridge for 3 to 5 days.
Glad you asked! There are lots of options.
Substitute the capers for pickles (see the “notes” in the recipe card). Swap the celery seeds with finely celery leaves (or thinly sliced celery).
Not a dill fan? Add some parsley for color and freshness instead. You can also replace the chives with thinly sliced scallions. Got baby mouth? Skip the jalapeño. Or for more tangy, add a spoon or two of pickled jalapeños.
For a nutrition punch, add 1/2 cup of blanched green beans or asparagus, or thinly sliced raw radishes, red/yellow bell peppers, or finely shredded red cabbage. The potato salad is quite saucy so it should be able to coat this amount of veggies.
If you love this herbed vegan potato salad, please leave a rating and review with your feedback and tag me on Instagram with your remakes 🙂
Introducing
Big Vegan Flavor
Techniques and 150 recipes to master vegan cooking.
The Best Vegan Potato Salad
Ingredients
- 2 pounds (900g) baby red potatoes, fingerling potatoes, or new potatoes
Dressing
- ¼ cup (56g) tahini, well-stirred
- 4 ounces (112g) unsweetened coconut yogurt (See Note 1)
- 2 teaspoons Dijon mustard
- 2 teaspoons yellow mustard
- 2 cloves garlic, crushed with a press or finely minced
- 1 medium lemon, zested (2-3 teaspoons zest)
- 3 tablespoons freshly squeezed lemon juice
- 1 teaspoon celery seeds (optional but recommended) (See Note 2)
- 1 teaspoon kosher salt
- Freshly cracked black pepper
- ⅓ to ½ cup (5 to 8g) fresh dill leaves, finely chopped (See Note 3)
- 1 tablespoon caper brine (See Note 4)
Salad ingredients
- 2 tablespoons capers, drained
- ½ cup (50-55g) red onion, thinly sliced or shaved
- 1 jalapeño pepper, de-seeded and thinly sliced (this is optional; keep the seeds in for a spicy kick)
- 1 to 2 tablespoons chives, chopped (or thinly sliced scallions)
- Flaky sea salt
Instructions
- Wash and scrub the potatoes but leave the peels on. Cut baby/new/fingerling potatoes in half; cut larger potatoes into chunks.
- Transfer the potatoes to a saucepan and cover with an inch of cold water. Season generously with kosher salt. Bring to a simmer and maintain a decent simmer for 8 to 12 minutes until just tender. If the fork pierces the potatoes with the slightest bit of resistance, the potatoes are done. Note: For reference, the halved baby red potatoes I used took only 8 minutes.
- Meanwhile, make the dressing. In a large bowl, whisk together the tahini, yogurt, Dijon mustard, yellow mustard, garlic, lemon zest, lemon juice, celery seeds, caper brine (not the whole capers), 1 teaspoon kosher salt, and pepper until well combined. Add 1 tablespoon of the chopped dill and stir together.Note: If the dressing is too thick, whisk in a tablespoon of cold water.
- Once the potatoes are cooked, drain them in a colander (reserve a little of the cooking liquid in case it's needed). Let the potatoes rest in the colander for 5 minutes to dry out, but don’t wait until they have cooled down.
- Add the warm potatoes to the dressing and coat evenly and well. If needed, add a spoon of the cooking water to bring everything together (I didn't need to).
- Add the capers, red onions, and jalapeños to the potato salad, and toss again gently. Sprinkle the remaining dill and the chives on top before serving. Season to taste with salt and pepper.
- Serve warm, or chill for at least 1 hour.
Video
Notes
- If you can’t find a good-quality plain coconut yogurt, you can use use vegan sour cream. My preferred brands are Kite Hill Foods and Tofutti (this one is quite thick, so you might need to add a spoon of water). If using sour cream, you’ll likely need less lemon juice and salt.
- If you don’t have celery seeds but have celery salt, substitute 1:1 and use ½ teaspoon kosher salt instead of 1 teaspoon. Or, add 3 tablespoons finely chopped celery leaves when you add the dill to the dressing.
- Use the lower end if you’re not a big fan of dill (I love dill, so I use the full ½ cup)
- Don’t have capers? You can substitute them with 1 finely chopped dill pickle and 1 to 2 tablespoons of the pickle juice.
Nutrition
Nutrition information is automatically calculated, so should only be used as an approximation.
Love this? Leave a rating below!
Wow! I cannot believe how good this is. I am a novice cook and most of the time really hate the dishes I make even when I follow a recipe. Now rainbowplantlife is the only blog I follow for recipes since they always come out perfect!! Thank you so much. <3 This meal felt both yummy and nutritious. Was so good And filling I didn’t even eat the main course I prepared with it!
For this dish, do you think I could just keep the small potatoes whole? I’m wondering if it would change the flavor. I am a slow chopper and I think this would really cut down on my cook time. I spent 30 min just chopping potatoes :(. Other than my slow chopping this recipe was a really quick to make.
Hi there Michelle, we are thrilled you love the potato salad! And yes, you can definitely eat the potatoes whole as long as they’re small enough. If not, you could add the potatoes to a food processor and pulse a few times. Happy cooking!
Potato salad is one of those dishes I hated from my pre-vegan days. But Nisha has turned me into a believer with so many other ingredients and dishes that I had to try for the sake of science. I’m sooo glad I did! Her potato salad so flavorful and easy to make, it’s a new regular in the rotation — words I’m shocked and delighted to say.
We agree with you! Nisha’s rendition definitely knocks all other potato salads out of the park! Thanks for the great review Jackalyn 🙂
Best potato salad I’ve ever tasted!!!
All of your recipes are amazing!!
Thank you for the awesome review, Amanda!
I made this today and was absolutely fantastic. Flavor galore, such a great combo! Thank you, Nisha!
Thanks for the lovely feedback, Elsa!
Made this to bring to a picnic tonight but contemplating keeping it for myself and buying store bought potato salad on the way….
So creamy and good!!
LOL, glad you loved this recipe! I hope you brought the version to the picnic and were able to show them how tasty vegan potato salad can be! 😉
I made this Herbed Potato Salad. It was the best potato salad that I have ever made. I am not vegan but every thing I made from your recipes turned fabulous. Thank you so much for sharing your recipes. You are so beautiful, smart and awesome!
Love to hear that, Gloria! Thanks for giving our recipes a shot despite not being vegan! 🙂
Third time making this in 2 weeks, love it that much. And everyone who’s had it loved it just as much!
We love to hear that, Chris! So happy you’re enjoying the recipe.
I made this and it was delicious! My whole family loved it.
So great to hear that, Aashish!
Nisha I made this potato salad for our 4th of July family celebration and it was accompanied by the traditional one made by my MIL. I would say this one is packed with flavor and I felt good that I was serving a side dish safe from the warm weather. Loved the crunch of the red onion and the tang of the capers with the brine. Yum thank you.
Awesome, Michelle. Thanks for your comment and for taking the time to review!
Excited to make these with dinner tonight!! Would it be worth using the instant pot with the potatoes? How long do you think it would take? 🙂
Hi there Whitney, it’s up to you! If you’re using baby potatoes like we did, they are really quick on the stove, as mentioned in the recipe card. If you’re using the instant pot, we would suggest adding some water to the instant pot, put the potatoes in a steamer basket, and pressure cook them for 5 minutes with a quick pressure release.