This Vegan Potato Salad without Mayo has all the flavors of the classic with a creamy healthy cashew sauce! Bonus, the recipe is also gluten-free with an oil-free option and a good amount of plant-based iron!
I love making easy plant-based salads, like my Vegan Couscous Salad, Vegan Taco Salad, or Vegan Soba Noodle Salad. They are a great way of getting you protein and enjoying a simple healthy lunch or side dish.
The classic potato salad recipes are not vegan-friendly since they often contain egg mayonnaise and boiled egg white. So let me show you how you can easily turn this favorite household dish into a delicious vegan recipe.
Why You’ll Love This Salad
This Vegan Potato Salad Without Mayo is a delicious summer side dish to serve with corn on a cob or with a smoked cauliflower. It’s also:
- Gluten-Free
- Grain-Free
- Paleo
- Dairy-Free
- Egg-Free
- Vegan
- Low-Carb
- Oil-Free Option
Ingredients and Substitutions
The combo of waxy potatoes and cashew dill dressing makes the best vegan potato salad for any occasion. So, to make the vegan dressing, you need:
- Potatoes – I recommend using Yellow Finn, Yukon Gold (by far my favorite option) or Red Potatoes.
- Soaked Cashew – It’s essential to soak the cashew for long enough to make sure they are easier to process.
- Yellow Mustard – avoid highly processed mustards or sugar-loaded mustard.
- Maple Syrup – or any other liquid sweetener such as coconut nectar or even sugar-free maple syrup.
- Garlic Powder – or fresh crushed garlic.
- Olive Oil – prefer a locally-sourced extra-virgin olive oil.
- Salt – and ground black pepper
- Lemon Juice – I prefer using the juice of fresh lemons, but you can use ready-made lemon juice.
- Pickle Juice or vinegar
- Dried Dill or fresh dill
Since this is a vegan dill potato salad, it also contains dried dill in the dressing. You can swap dried dill for fresh dill or fresh parsley. Always double the quantity of fresh herbs. The salad also uses yellow mustard, a sweet variety of mustard that makes the dressing slightly sweet and not too sour.
There is another option to make the sauce with mustard like American mustard or French Dijon mustard. Since Dijon mustard is spicier and tastes stronger, use only half the amount!
How To Make Vegan Potato Salad Without Mayo
There are three ways of making vegan potato salads.
First, you can use homemade vegan mayonnaise – called veganaise – which is not my favorite option since it brings a lot of oil into your salad.
Next, you can use dairy-free yogurt combined with lemon juice and vinegar. It is a light and tasty option, but the flavor of dairy-free vegan yogurt is empowering in salads.
Finally, you can make a creamy cashew vegan potato salad dressing! Let me guide you step-by-step into this healthy version of my vegan potato salad, no mayo is needed!
- Choose the best potato variety for potato salad (read below). In order to boil potatoes to perfection, always place the potatoes skin-on in a saucepan filled with cold water.
- Then, cover and bring water to a boil.
- Finally, simmer and cook until the potatoes are fork-tender. Always drain potatoes over the sink in a sieve and let them steam out for 10 minutes. This easy vegan potato salad recipe uses a creamy cashew sauce as a dressing.
- First, you need to soak the cashews to soften the nuts. You can soften cashews quickly by covering them with boiling water for 30 minutes. Otherwise, you can soak them in cold water overnight.
- Then, add all the sauce ingredients into a blender and blend until creamy and smooth.
- Finally, adjust the texture of the sauce by adding more water if needed to thin the sauce.
- Peel the potatoes in rough cube shapes and place them in a large salad bowl along with the chopped celery, red onion, and dill pickles.
- Pour the sauce onto the bowl, combine and serve as a warm potato salad or refrigerate for a few hours and serve cold.
Serving Suggestion
This vegan dill potato salad is perfect as a side to your vegan summer barbecues. There are so many delicious vegan foods you can grill in summer, like zucchini, corn, mushrooms, tofu, and tempeh.
In fact, a simple marinade made of olive oil, smoked paprika, garlic, and cumin will turn any of these delicious vegan foods into a tasty vegetable skewer that marries well with your potato salad. You can also serve this potato salad as a main dish since the cashews and potatoes are already very nourishing.
Frequently Asked Questions
What makes all the difference in a potato salad is the texture of the potatoes. Therefore, it is very important to pick the right variety of potatoes for your salad.
You want potatoes that hold their shape when cooked, waxy potatoes that won’t turn the salad into a mushy mess when combined with the sauce.
Consequently, the best potato varieties for potato salad are:
– Yellow Finn
– Yukon Gold – by far my favorite option!
– Red potatoes
As a general rule, we peel the skin off potatoes to make potato salad. Some cooks love to keep the skin on, which is a nourishing option but not obviously tastier since the skin can form unpleasant lumps in the sauce.
Yes, you can make ahead potato salad and store it in the fridge in an airtight container. It is totally fine to boil the potatoes the day before and store them in the fridge as well as the sauce. However, if you want to serve a warm vegan potato salad, store the cooked, chopped potatoes separately from the sauce. The minute before serving, rewarm the potatoes in the microwave until lukewarm, pour the sauce, and serve immediately.
More Vegan Salad Recipes
If you love vegan salads, you may also want to try this one:
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Vegan Potato Salad
Ingredients
- 1.1 pounds Yukon Gold Potatoes - unpeeled
- ½ cup Celery - finely chopped
- 2 large Dill Pickles - finely chopped
- ½ cup Red Onion - finely chopped
Cashew creamy sauce
- 1 cup Cashew - soaked in boiling water for 30 minutes or cold water overnight
- ½ cup + 2 tablespoons Water
- 2 tablespoons Lemon Juice
- 2 teaspoons Pickle Juice - or vinegar
- 1 tablespoon Oil - Avocado or light olive oil
- 2 teaspoons Maple Syrup - or agave syrup
- 1 tablespoon Yellow Mustard - or 1/2 tablespoon French Dijon Mustard
- ½ teaspoon Salt
- ½ teaspoon Garlic Powder
- 1 teaspoon Dried Dill
Instructions
- In a medium bowl, add cashews, cover with boiling water, cover the bowl with a plate, and set aside 30 minutes. Otherwise, cover with cold water and soak overnight.
Cook the potatoes
- Place the unpeeled potatoes in a large saucepan and cover with cold water. Cover the pan and bring the water to a boil.
- Reduce to medium heat and cook for about 10-15 minutes or until a knife inserted in the center of the potatoes easily goes in and out. If you used potatoes of different sizes, the smallest ones would cook faster. Remove these first with a slotted spoon, set them aside in a bowl, and keep cooking the biggest one until they pass the knife test.
- Drain the water from the saucepan, pouring the potatoes into a sieve over the sink.
- Cool the potatoes for 5 to 10 minutes in the sieve to give time for the steam to evaporate. Meanwhile, prepare the sauce.
Cashew sauce
- Drain the cashews and place them in a high-speed blender.
- Add in all the sauce ingredients in this order: water, lemon juice, vinegar, oil, maple syrup, mustard, salt, garlic powder, and dill.
- Blend at high speed until it forms a creamy sauce. You may have to stop the blender, scrape down the sides and repeat until all the ingredients come together into a creamy sauce. If too thick, adjust by adding more water, 1 tablespoon at a time, blending between each addition.
Assemble the potato salad
- Peel the potatoes if you like and roughly chop the lukewarm potatoes into 1 cm chunks.
- Place the potato chunks in a large salad bowl.
- Add in the finely chopped vegetables: celery, dill pickles, and red onion.
- Pour the cashew sauce onto the salad bowl and toss the vegetables together.
- Refrigerate for a few hours before serving to enhance flavors or serve lukewarm.
My 15 year old daughter made this potato salad and I asked her for the recipe. Everyone who’s tried this recipe loves it and is surprised when we tell them it’s vegan. It’s simple to make and tastes so good!
This potatoe salad is so….. good. My husband didn’t even know it was vegan.It is even better the next day.
This recipe is great! Coming from a southern town, we have potato salad at every event and I never could enjoy it until now! Fantastic potato salad!