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Cuauhtemoc, Chihuahua's Mennonite potato salad: cold-folded with sweet pickles, mustard, mayo, and crema. The German-heritage sweet-tang you will not find anywhere else in Mexico.
This is a Chihuahua dish. More specifically, it is a Cuauhtemoc dish, from the Mennonite colonies that settled the high plains north of the city in the 1920s and brought a German Low-Saxon kitchen with them. Drive an hour northwest of Chihuahua city and you are in Campos Menonitas: wheat fields, dairy barns, blonde children speaking Plautdietsch, and a food culture that reads almost nothing like the rest of Mexico. The queso menonita on every Mexican grocery shelf comes from these colonies. So does this potato salad.
The signature is the sweet pickle and the mustard. Not jalapeno. Not chipotle. Not lime. Sweet pepinillo and yellow mustard, folded into mayonnaise loosened with crema mexicana, dressed over warm boiled potato. That sweet-tang is the German heritage of the Mennonite kitchen, and it is found nowhere else in Mexico. If you try to make this with dill pickles or hot pickles, you have made a different salad. The sweetness is the point.
I spent a week in Cuauhtemoc on the 32-state project, eating in Mennonite kitchens where the women still bake their own bread on Tuesdays and roast their own coffee. The potato salad showed up at every comida, on the same table as queso menonita, kielke noodles, and warm flour tortillas, because flour tortillas belong to Chihuahua the way corn tortillas belong to Oaxaca. Cada estado, su propia cocina, and Chihuahua's includes this. Recetas probadas y garantizadas.
The Mennonites of Cuauhtemoc arrived in 1922 from Manitoba, Canada, after the Canadian government withdrew the religious-instruction exemptions that had originally drawn them from the Russian Empire in the 1870s. President Alvaro Obregon granted the community a Privilegium guaranteeing exemption from military service and the right to operate their own German-language schools, and in exchange the colonies agricultural-industrialized the high desert of northwestern Chihuahua, eventually producing roughly half of Mexico's apples and the bulk of its industrial cheese. The dishes they brought, including this potato salad with its sweet-pickle and mustard signature, descend from the Plautdietsch-speaking Mennonite kitchens of Prussia and Ukraine, and have remained largely intact across nearly a century of Chihuahuense isolation, a German-heritage food tradition preserved on Mexican soil.
Quantity
3 pounds
scrubbed
Quantity
1 tablespoon
for the cooking water
Quantity
6
Quantity
1 cup
full fat, the real one
Quantity
1/2 cup
Quantity
3 tablespoons
Quantity
1 tablespoon
Quantity
3/4 cup
finely diced
Quantity
3 tablespoons
from the jar
Quantity
1/2 cup
finely diced
Quantity
1/2 cup
finely diced
Quantity
2 tablespoons
thinly sliced
Quantity
1 1/2 teaspoons, plus more to taste
Quantity
1/2 teaspoon
Quantity
1/4 teaspoon
for finishing
Quantity
for serving
Quantity
for serving
| Ingredient | Quantity |
|---|---|
| yellow potatoes (Yukon gold or papa amarilla)scrubbed | 3 pounds |
| kosher saltfor the cooking water | 1 tablespoon |
| large eggs | 6 |
| mayonnaisefull fat, the real one | 1 cup |
| crema mexicana | 1/2 cup |
| yellow mustard | 3 tablespoons |
| apple cider vinegar | 1 tablespoon |
| sweet pickles (gherkins or pepinillos dulces)finely diced | 3/4 cup |
| sweet pickle brinefrom the jar | 3 tablespoons |
| celeryfinely diced | 1/2 cup |
| white onionfinely diced | 1/2 cup |
| fresh chives or green onion topsthinly sliced | 2 tablespoons |
| kosher salt | 1 1/2 teaspoons, plus more to taste |
| freshly ground black pepper | 1/2 teaspoon |
| sweet paprikafor finishing | 1/4 teaspoon |
| sliced hard-boiled egg (optional) | for serving |
| chopped chives (optional) | for serving |
Place the scrubbed potatoes whole, skin on, in a large pot. Cover with cold water by two inches and add the tablespoon of salt. Bring to a gentle simmer over medium heat and cook for 20 to 25 minutes, until a paring knife slides into the largest potato with no resistance. Whole and skin-on is how the Mennonite cooks of Cuauhtemoc do it. The skin holds the starch in and the potato stays firm instead of waterlogged.
While the potatoes cook, place the eggs in a separate saucepan and cover with cold water by one inch. Bring to a boil over medium-high heat. The moment it boils, cover the pan, kill the heat, and let the eggs sit for 11 minutes. Drain and shock in ice water. The cold stop is what gives you a clean peel and a yolk that is set but not chalky.
Drain the potatoes and let them cool on a sheet pan until you can hold them comfortably. Peel them with a paring knife or rub the skins off with a kitchen towel. Cube into 3/4-inch pieces. They should be just warm, not hot. A hot potato breaks down into mush when it meets the dressing. A cold potato will not absorb the flavors. Just warm is the right window.
In a large bowl, whisk together the mayonnaise, crema, mustard, apple cider vinegar, and the three tablespoons of sweet pickle brine. The brine is not optional. It is the German-heritage signature of Mennonite cooking and it is what tells you this salad came from Cuauhtemoc and not from anywhere else in Mexico. Taste the dressing now. It should be tangy, sweet, and assertive. Season with one teaspoon of the salt and the black pepper.
Add the diced sweet pickles, celery, white onion, and chives to the dressing. Stir to coat. Peel and chop four of the hard-boiled eggs into rough 1/2-inch pieces and fold them in. Reserve the remaining two eggs, sliced, for the top.
Add the warm cubed potatoes to the bowl. Fold with a wide spatula, lifting from the bottom rather than stirring in circles. You want every cube coated but still intact. Taste again and adjust salt. Warm potato absorbs salt differently than cold potato, so the seasoning will shift as it cools. Add the remaining half teaspoon of salt if it needs it.
Cover and refrigerate for at least two hours, or overnight. The salad needs the cold time. The mustard and pickle brine settle into the potato and the dressing tightens. Before serving, transfer to a clean serving bowl, arrange the sliced eggs across the top, dust with sweet paprika, and scatter chopped chives over the surface. Serve cold. Asi se hace y punto.
1 serving (about 265g)
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