Best Easy Instant Pot Potato Salad

Use your Instant Pot to make this delicious classic potato salad recipe. Loaded with all fresh ingredients, it’s super easy to make and is the perfect side dish to bring to any occasion.

Use Russet Potatoes for Instant Pot Potato Salad

We’ll use good old classic russet potatoes for our Instant Pot potato salad. They’re the perfect taste and texture, just like the potato salad you know and love. Start by peeling the potatoes and cutting into 1 inch chunks. Then we give them a good rinse before adding to the Instant Pot with 1.5 cups of water and a ½ teaspoon of salt. Adding the salt to the water for cooking is really important. Potatoes need salt and by adding it to the water, this allows the flavor to really penetrate the potatoes while cooking. So be sure not to skip this part.

Pressure Cook for Just 3 Minutes

After we add our potatoes, water and salt to the Instant Pot, secure the lid, set the vent to “sealing”, and pressure cook on high for 3 minutes. Though 3 minutes seems like little time, the potatoes will be cooking while the Instant Pot comes to pressure. This takes about 5-10 minutes. Once the pot reaches pressure, it will beep and the timer will begin. When the cooking time is done, do a quick release of the pressure and remove the lid when the pin drops. Press cancel. Drain the potatoes in a colander and then return them to the Instant Pot.

Perfect Dressing for Potato Salad

Whipping up the dressing for the potato salad is easy too. I love to use fresh dill and fresh chives. We’ll use about ¼ cup of finely chopped fresh dill and 2 tablespoons of fresh, finely chopped chives. If you don’t have fresh dill, use 3 teaspoons of dried dill. For the chives, you can substitute 2 teaspoons of dried chives. The base for our potato salad dressing is 1 cup of mayonnaise, ¼ cup of buttermilk and 2 tablespoons of dijon mustard. I suggest regular dijon mustard as opposed to course stone ground dijon. The classic dijon is the right taste and texture. If you don’t have dijon, use 1 tablespoon of yellow mustard. Anther important ingredient is the lemon juice. But, we won’t add that to the dressing, we’ll actually add it directly to the potatoes after they’re drained and returned to the pot. We want that acidity to get adsorbed directly into the potatoes. If you don’t have lemon juice you can substitute apple cider vinegar.

Finally, for our dressing we’ll add a ¼ cup of finely chopped red onion. You can also ad some chopped celery if you like.

Mix Gently and Chill Out

When our dressing is made, gently stir it in to the potatoes. You don’t want to mash or break up the potatoes so use a wooden spoon or even a spatula and just fold the potatoes and dressing together. You can also add a little salt or pepper at this point to taste. Then put your freshly made potato salad in a container in the fridge and let it cool for a few hours or overnight before serving.

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