A Turkish Potato Salad Recipe: Patates Salatası

Potato salad – it’s a classic dish, isn’t it?

But never tastes the same wherever you go to eat. Each person who makes it has their own recipe.

And, over our years of living in Turkey, we’re quite comfortable with our own Turkish potato salad recipe after experimenting with different fresh herbs and dressings.

Each time we had potato salad at a friend’s house or at a restaurant, we did our usual of forking through it to see what was included (and omitted).

And now we have our own dish that we’re happy with.

We tend to use our Turkish potato salad as an addition to our meze table. So we’ve got it in our category for meze recipes on the blog.

But, in Turkey, many people also have potato salad as part of the Turkish breakfast table.

You really can’t beat a good potato salad at breakfast time. But, when we first saw it, we remember thinking it was odd…

Until we tried it!

On the Turkish gület cruise we did, the chef did his own version and placed it on the table, one day.

We were so happy to see it…especially when most of the other guests on the boat looked at it with confusion.

They left it well alone. Potatoes with breakfast?

Obviously not for them…and, obviously, more for us!

Potato salad is a dish we always make after we’ve been to any of the local Fethiye markets and spot a huge pile of baby new potatoes.

We just can’t walk past them, for some reason, as they call out, “Buy me, buy me!”

This happens most often at the Friday village market in Fethiye.

Whilst we usually struggle to find potatoes big enough for our old faithful baked potato recipe at this pazar, baby potatoes abound…sometimes.

(We like the village market because you’re never quite sure what you’re going to get).

Whilst spring is usually the best time to find the baby new potatoes, we have also seen them in winter.

So it’s all about keeping our eyes peeled when we’re browsing the stalls.

Our Turkish Potato Salad Recipe

A lot of recipes you will see are usually for potatoes of any size, peeled and chopped into large chunks.

And when you do this recipe, you can use whatever kind of potatoes you like.

If you’re using starchy potatoes, however, make sure you give them a good soak to get rid of some of the starch.

As we like a small waxy potato, skin left right where it is, our recipe is more of a ‘new potato salad recipe.’

And as we’re in Turkey, let’s make patates salatası...

Our Potato Salad Ingredients

This is a really easy recipe.

When you see Turkish potato salads, if there are any peppers present, they are usually green.

We love a bit of colour – and a bit of savoury sweetness, too, in our lives.

And the contrast between the red and the green of freshly chopped herbs looks so appetising so we always go for red peppers.

Our crisp, green herbs are fresh parsley and fresh dill, which are both roughly chopped.

We also like to add the chilli flakes (hot red pepper flakes) because, as you no doubt know, we love a bit of heat to our food.

And the sumac? That’s a spice commonly used in Turkish cuisine, especially where raw onion is involved.

A splash of deep colour and a dry zesty flavour to go with moist lemon and olive oil dressing.

In the UK, a lot of potato salads have a creamy dressing, often a mayonnaise-based potato salad.

This Turkish recipe has lighter tangy dressing ingredients.

Added Bonus

Here’s another little optional interesting addition, too, for this dish.

Many years ago, when we were first invited to a friend’s house for evening meal, one of the meze dishes she put on the table was potato salad.

But it was like one we had never seen before.

Her starchy potatoes were peeled and chopped. Then boiled until soft.

The usual herbs – lemon and oil were present.

But there was also another ingredient we’d never before seen in a potato salad – pieces of chopped egg.

All the ingredients were mixed in together and lightly compressed into a deep bowl.

While we thought it was a bit odd to see this, when we sat down to eat, we both agreed the eggs really worked.

We’ve seen hard-boiled eggs in potato salads many times since then. So it’s become a bit of a norm for us, these days.

As we said, we use new waxy potatoes, so our egg addition is slices of egg on the side. As you can see in the photo above.

This works, too; the sunshine yellow of the egg yolks contributing to the colour mix.

Homemade Potato Salad – FAQs

This is our take on a classic recipe – it’s our Turkish potato salad recipe.

So there you have it! A simple, but very tasty Turkish potato salad. Afiyet olsun!

Click to browse our complete list of Turkish recipes.

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