Ina Garten’s French potato salad is the kind of side dish that looks polished without asking much from the cook. Her Food Network recipe combines tender potatoes, a sharp vinaigrette, and a handful of fresh herbs for a salad that feels classic and dinner party ready.
What Ina Garten’s French potato salad is
Food Network lists Garten’s French Potato Salad as an easy recipe from The Barefoot Contessa Cookbook, with a total time of 50 minutes and a yield of 4 to 6 servings. The recipe uses both small white boiling potatoes and small red boiling potatoes, which gives the finished dish a little visual contrast before the herbs are even added. It is one of those restrained recipes where the ingredient list does most of the work.
Instead of a mayonnaise dressing, Garten builds the salad around dry white wine, chicken stock, Champagne vinegar, Dijon mustard, olive oil, scallions, dill, parsley, and basil. According to the Food Network directions, the warm cut potatoes are first tossed with the wine and chicken stock so the liquid can soak in before the vinaigrette goes on. That detail helps explain why the salad tastes seasoned all the way through, not just coated on the outside.
The recip...