Make a healthier potato salad that’s great any time of year! This Warm Garlic Herb Red Potato Salad is perfect as an allergy friendly side dish for any occasion, and looks impressive as a dinner party side dish. This recipe has no mayo and is also grain free, gluten free, dairy free, egg free, and vegan.
Thank you Potatoes USA for sponsoring this post. Make a delicious and convenient meal for your family tonight with potatoes!
Since the New Year has started, it seems like everyone has goals of some kind: fitness goals, nutrition goals, business goals, etc. I’m not into resolutions, but I love it when people make goals throughout the year!
Even though I haven’t really written a post about my goals for my this month and the coming year, I do have a short list of them. One of my goals for my blog is to be a bit more diverse in my recipe offerings, posting more savory dishes, mains, and sides.
Another goal of mine is to continue to eat healthier, and potatoes are a great way to eat healthier. They are convenient, provide a base for tons of recipes, and they are a staple in every culture around the world. Potatoes provide tons of healthy recipe options! I keep small potatoes on hand to bake in the microwave when I need some healthy carbohydrates quickly.
This Warm Garlic Herb Red Potato Salad meets both of my goals in one recipe: it’s a savory side dish and it’s a healthy makeover of traditional high calorie potato salads, and it’s sooo good!
While not all of the recipes on The Fit Cookie can be considered healthy, I do try to make the majority of our recipes better-for-you. This red potato salad is healthier than traditional potato salad recipes since it has less fat and calories, no refined ingredients, and it’s allergy friendly.
If you want to lower the calories even more in this recipe, you can reduce the olive oil to 3 Tablespoons instead of 1/4 cup (which is 4 Tablespoons).
How to make red potato salad
We also left the skin on the potatoes, adding a bit more fiber to this recipe. Leaving the peel on red potatoes in recipes adds some nice color to your dish, plus peeling these potatoes is impractical since they are so small. That would be quite a chore!
The amazing thing about this warm potato salad is that it’s quicker to make since it doesn’t take several hours to chill, plus it’s great to have as a side dish all year long, even in the fall and winter, since it’s warm. If you want this recipe chilled in the summer, you can certainly refrigerate this for several hours, it still tastes great!
I used fresh garlic in this recipe and it can be a bit strong, so if you’re not in to strong garlic, you can use roasted garlic instead of fresh garlic. Or you can use garlic powder instead as well.
Check out our other salad recipes:
- Classic Dairy Free Greek Salad
- Warm Garlic Herb Red Potato Salad
- Smoked Salmon Salad
- Thai Cucumber Chicken Salad
Warm Garlic Herb Potato Salad
Ingredients
- 2 pounds baby red potatoes I used very small potatoes about 1 to 2-inches in size
Garlic Herb Dressing:
- ¼ cup olive oil
- 3 Tablespoons loosely packed fresh basil roughly chopped
- 1 Tablespoon fresh thyme leaves
- 1 clove garlic* minced/pressed
- Zest of 1 lemon
- 1 ½ teaspoon fresh lemon juice
- ½ teaspoon salt
- ½ teaspoon Cajun all-purpose seasoning** optional
- ¼ teaspoon black pepper
- 1 Tablespoon sliced green onions or chives
Instructions
Potatoes:
- Add the washed and unpeeled red potatoes to a 2 quart or 4 quart heavy sauce pan, add enough water to cover the top of the potatoes.
- Bring the pot of water and potatoes to a boil, and boil for 15 minutes until the a fork can pierce the potatoes easily but are still firm enough to hold their shape.
- Remove from the heat and drain the water from the pan, and allow the potatoes to cool for about 30 minutes. You can spread the potatoes out on a baking sheet to allow to them to cool a bit faster if you need.
Dressing:
- While the potatoes are cooling, prepare the dressing. Place the olive oil, basil, thyme, garlic, lemon zest, lemon juice, salt, cajun seasoning, and black pepper in a small blender and blend just long enough to emulsify the dressing and mince the herbs.
- Once the potatoes have cooled a bit and you can handle them, cut each potato into bite-sized pieces. Since my potatoes were small, I just quartered my potatoes.
- Add the Garlic Herb dressing to the potatoes, add the sliced green onions (or chives), and stir until well mixed and the potatoes are completely coated.
- Serve while still warm. Store in a sealed container in the fridge for up to 3-4 days.
Notes
Nutrition
Sarah Jane Parker is the founder, recipe creator, and photographer behind The Fit Cookie. She’s a food allergy mom and healthy living blogger based in Wyoming. Sarah is also an ACSM Certified Personal Trainer, ACE Certified Health Coach, Revolution Running certified running coach, and an ACE Certified Fitness Nutrition Specialist
Can you make this ahead of time by microwaving?
Hi Nell, if you want to make this ahead, you can serve it at room temperature or chilled if you like. Or you can microwave it a bit to warm it up, too.
Now this is what I’m talking about! Love potatoes, but not potato salad because of the mayonnaise! This has been pinned and will be made possibly for the 4th!
Thank you Jules! Potato salad without mayo is the best, and this one is so good!
Delicious easy light salad everyone will love!
Thanks Brooke!