Turkish Potato Salad

Turkish Potato Salad with herbs and hard-boiled eggs is very light, healthy and refreshing yet so tasty with all the Mediterranean flavors. A little spicy and tangy, this salad is so different from traditional mayonnaise-based potato salads. Perfect for potlucks!

The number one potato recipe in Turkish cuisine is stuffed baked potatoes kumpir, but this potato salad is a staple in gatherings. As we love to make our twist on classic recipes, we've made potato tuna egg salad, roasted peppers and potato salad without mayo and avocado potato salad before. Love them all! Oh and if you are after a vegan option, go check out our vegan potato salad recipe with tahini dressing.

Turkish Potato Salad is mostly considered as a light dinner especially in summer. You can definitely have it as a side dish during holidays, but in my country we have this salad on its own in spring or summer. You know the times when you don't feel like eating comforting foods when it's so hot outside. It's super filling thanks to hard-boiled eggs and black and green olives. If you want even more protein in your salad, you can even add some tuna fish, just like we do in our potato tuna egg salad.

Turkish potato salad is quite different from the mayonnaise-based potato salad recipes. This one is much healthier as the only oil in it is olive oil. The herbs like fresh parsley, mint and dill make it perfectly refreshing and suitable for the coming spring.

We don't have olives in traditional Turkish potato salad recipes but I want to give it a more Mediterranean taste. I think black and green olives give it a gorgeous flavor, so don't leave them out.

Sumac, which is a wonderful Middle East spice, gives it a great tangy and slightly earthy flavor. I love it so much that I use it quite often in salads. Have you ever had boiled potatoes as a snack or a breakfast food? Just sprinkle a little salt and sumac on a boiled potato and enjoy!

We didn’t have enough time to prepare a dish for dinner this evening. We were so hungry that we needed something quick, but of course it wouldn’t be a kind of prepackaged food. Any guess what we do in Turkey whenever we feel too tired to cook something suitable for dinner?

In Turkish culture, a perfect dinner should include a kind of soup as a starter and as a main dish like meat, chicken or vegetable stew. These should be accompanied by a kind of salad or yogurt. No need to mention desserts for a wonderful ending. However, we don’t always have time for all these courses as we are working. Fortunately, our culture has a great solution for people in need of quick dishes. That is breakfast for dinner.

The word "breakfast" is beyond the morning meal in Turkish language. It doesn’t mean only the meal eaten in the morning. If you have tea, cheese, olives, sliced tomatoes, peppers and cucumbers on your table, it is called breakfast in Turkey no matter what time of the day you eat them. These are indispensable foods of a typical Turkish breakfast. And it’s up to you to enrich your breakfast with some pastries or different versions of eggs or other food creations.

So this evening, we decided to have a breakfast style dinner. The most common food of this untimely breakfast is potato salad, especially when it gets warmer outside. We just boiled potatoes and eggs, chopped herbs and made this super tasty Turkish potato salad. We felt really close to spring with this light and sensational salad.

Adding eggs into Turkish potato salad is up to you. Personally, I do love eggs in any version, so I can't think of a potato salad without them. How you add eggs into this salad depends on your taste as well. Some people love eggs sliced as a garnish on the top while others love them combined well with the salad.

As always: If you make this recipe, let us know what you think by rating it and leaving a comment below. And post a pic on Instagram too—tag @give_recipe so we can see!

Sign up for the FREE GiveRecipe Newsletter to get the new recipes into your inbox! And stay in touch with us on Facebook, Pinterest, YouTube and Instagram for all the latest updates.

Print