Cold Italian Baked Potato Salad

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Today’s recipe is a variation of one of my favorite salads in the entire world. Potato salad! (I mean it has the word salad in its name, so I can count it as somewhat of a health food, right? I know…I know, but I had to try!)

Like so many of my recipe posts, potato salad also has a connection to my grandparents. They used to grow the biggest potatoes I’ve ever seen in their garden. And Grandma always made the most comforting, cold potato salad in the summers. While she never had an official recipe for it (and when you asked her how she made it, she’d just say she never remembered exactly), I grew to love it. Hers wasn’t like anything you could buy at the store, and to this day, I still haven’t been able to figure out what she did to make it taste so delightfully different. (You can find some of my grandma’s other recipes here and here.)

The Backstory

So of course when I moved out on my own while in college, one of my goals was to try and recreate Grandma’s potato salad. That turned out to be a total failure, but I did end up creating a divine version of potato salad that is requested by my father-in-law at just about every family get together.

I was living in my little apartment while in college and eagerly buying ALL of the cookbooks I could afford. Then I’d spend most Sunday afternoons trying out new recipes for my college sweetheart (now husband). After all, I wasn’t living with my mom, so I didn’t have anyone to panic about the mess I was making in the kitchen like she’d done every single day since I was 12 and discovered my love for cooking. And my sweetheart was eager to pitch in after dinner and help me clean up the mess. Win-win!

One Sunday evening, I had made my sweetheart pork chops (his favorite…hey, they say a way to a man’s heart is through his stomach, and for my guy that proved to be true), biscuits, green beans, and my new baked potato salad. He didn’t seem too sure at first, but after that first bite, he was in heaven! And I’ve been asked to make it many, many times in the past 20 years.

What’s in it?

This is not your typical potato salad. The potatoes are baked in Italian dressing until they are soft, then combined with an orange bell pepper, mayo, lemon juice, bacon (because bacon makes everything better), green onions, basil, garlic powder, salt, and pepper. The results are an explosive Italian flavored potato salad that is to die for.

Baked Potato Salad Recipe

Start by preheating your oven to 400 degrees. Then rinse and dice a whole bag of yellow golden baby potatoes. You can use regular potatoes, but yellow golden taste so much better to me in this recipe.

Place your potatoes in a 9X13 inch pan.

Drizzle with an entire 16 ounce bottle of zesty Italian dressing. Then stir.

Put into your preheated 400 degree oven. Stir them every 20 minutes or so to keep them from sticking. Bake for about an hour or until the potatoes are done.

Once your potatoes are done and cooling, mix the following ingredients in a large bowl:

Dice one orange bell pepper.

If you don’t want your bell pepper to be quite so crunchy (or if your kids don’t like it crunchy like mine), you can put it on top of the just hot out of the oven potatoes. This will soften your pepper some.

Measure 1 1/2 cups real mayonnaise into your large bowl.

Add 1 tablespoon of lemon juice and stir.

Cook and crumble 7 strips of bacon. Bacon makes everything better!

Then add the bacon to your mayonnaise mixture.

Add in 2 teaspoons of dried basil.

Next, add 1/4 teaspoon of garlic powder.

Add 1/4 teaspoon of salt. Then add 1/4 teaspoon of pepper. Stir until well combined.

Cut 2 green onions, and add to your mayonnaise mixture.

Stir in the green onions. Add your completely cooled potatoes, and mix well.

Here comes the most important part. Are you ready? ENJOY!

This potato salad recipe is nice to have around because it can take the place of times that you’d normally serve regular potato salad. It does take awhile to make, so you do need to plan ahead. And it pairs nicely with lots of different things. From hamburgers, to hot dogs, to brats, and even pork chops…you can enjoy this potato salad with just about anything.

Go ahead and make your list of ingredients needed for this recipe so you can pick them up the next time you’re at the store. You know you want to! Then let us know how it turned out in the comments below. Happy eating!

Baked Potato Salad

An Italian flavored baked potato salad exploding with flavor.

5 from 9 votes

Print Recipe Pin Recipe

Prep Time 15 minutes mins

Cook Time 1 hour hr

Total Time 1 hour hr 15 minutes mins

Course Side Dish

Cuisine American

Calories 565 kcal

Ingredients

  

• 1 bag Baby Gold Potatoes
• 1 16 oz bottle of zesty Italian salad dressing
• 1 orange bell pepper
• 1 ½ cups real mayonnaise
• 1 tbsp lemon juice
• 7 strips of cooked and crumbled bacon
• 2 tsp dried basil
• ¼ tsp garlic powder
• ¼ tsp salt
• ¼ tsp black pepper
• 2 green onions, chopped

Instructions

 

• Preheat your oven to 400°.
• Wash and dice the entire bag of potatoes.
• Place the potatoes in a 9X13 inch pan.
• Drizzle the potatoes with the entire bottle of zesty Italain dressing.
• Mix.
• Bake at 400°, stirring the potatoes every 20 minutes so they don't stick.
• Bake for 1 hour or until potatoes are done.

While potatoes are cooling, mix the following in a large mixing bowl:

• Wash and dice 1 orange bell pepper. You can place the pepper on top of your cooling potatoes so it isn't so crunchy if you like.
• Measure 1 ½ cups real mayonnaise and put it in the bowl.
• Add 1 tbsp lemon juice.
• Cook and crumble 7 strips of bacon. Add to the bowl.
• Add 2 tsp dried basil.
• Add ¼ tsp garlic powder.
• Add ¼ tsp salt and ¼ tsp pepper.
• Wash and chop 2 green onions. Add to your mixing bowl.
• Mix completely.
• Add your cooled potatoes.
• ENJOY!

Keyword baked potato salad

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