Cold Roasted Baby Potato Salad with Lemon (No Mayo)

This cold potato salad uses oven roasted baby gold potatoes and tosses them with a tart and sweet lemon, mustard and rosemary dressing (no eggs). Instead of mayo, use yogurt (vegan ok) to create a creamy smooth sauce to coat the potatoes.

Be sure to check out more of my cold summer salads including my summer quinoa salad with fresh corn and blueberries, mixed fresh berry salad with basil and feta and my persian cucumber salad with mango tossed with a zingy lemon ginger vinaigrette.

The Best Way to Cook Potatoes for Salad

The only time I boil potatoes is when I’m making mashed potatoes. Otherwise, I’m a firm believer in roasting potatoes. While boiling adds water to the potatoes, roasting potatoes concentrates and brings out their sweet flavor.

Potato salad with roasted potatoes has a different texture. The potatoes stay intact and there’s less of that mealy texture that boiled potatoes create.

No-Mayo, No-Egg Potato Salad

There are so many good reasons to leave mayo out of your potato salad. For one thing, potato salad is a regular picnic/barbecue/outdoor summer food. Yet mayo doesn’t do well sitting in the heat. I use vegan yogurt as the replacement which can handle the heat longer.

Also I am not a fan of mayo and it’s not a very nutritious or healthy ingredient. There are many ways to replace mayo in a salad and still have it be tasty, rich and creamy.

So I leave mayonnaise out of almost all of my salads. Plain unsweetened yogurt, including vegan yogurt, does a great job of creating that creamy texture that you want in a potato salad.

I much prefer my potato salad with out hard boiled eggs. I have too many vegan friends and don’t feel like eggs add much flavor to a potato salad.

Ingredients

Waxy potatoes are the best for potato salad. They are less starchy than russet potatoes and hold up nicely. My favorite baby potatoes are yellow or Dutch gold potatoes. They have a buttery, sweet flavor and very tender skin.

In place of mayo, plain unsweetened yogurt creates a creamy texture. I like vegan yogurt substitutes because they can handle sitting at room temperature for longer. My preferred one is Kite Hill Almond Milk Yogurt. Almond milk yogurts are best – I find that the coconut based vegan yogurts have too much coconut flavor.

Lemon and potatoes are such a great flavor pairing so I use lemon juice in place of the usual vinegar. It also pairs extremely well with the fresh rosemary and herbs in the salad.

Yellow mustard adds a hint of salty, vinegar flavor. If you prefer Dijon mustard or spicy brown mustard those can be used to but will add a slightly different flavor to the salad.

Rosemary, lemon and potatoes are a heavenly combo. You can use dried or fresh rosemary for this recipe.

I love a little crunch in my potato salad so I add minced celery. But if you are not a fan of celery, it is okay to leave it out. The salad is delicious without it.

Finally two ingredients will round out the flavor profile of the salad. A sweet element like agave, sugar or maple syrup balances the tart lemon and salty mustard and enhances the sweetness in the potatoes. Green onions add a little pop of pungent flavor. That makes this potato salad sweet, salty, bitter, sour – the perfect combination to make your taste buds jump for joy.