Japanese potato salad

Did you know Japanese make potato salad? This looks really good. They use Yukon gold potatoes, and lighten it with a near equal amount of pickled vegetables. Pickled with salt. To get the sting out of onions and the water out of cucumbers.

The mayonnaise they use is a brand called Kewpie. It's both sweeter and tangier than American style So, to compensate for this shortcoming additional rice vinegar and scant sugar is added. And right there you notice the sweet/sour quotient is kicked up a notch.

The cucumber they use is smaller than our favorite type and much similar next to English cucumber that can be used to substitute.

Onion and cucumber are sliced thinly. Salted then rinsed and the water squeezed out.

Boiled carrots are also added.

50% of the potatoes are smashed and the remaining cooked potato cubes left whole.

This woman smashes all of the potatoes and she salts her onion and cucumber separately unnecessarily.

She also adds corn (another American ingredient) but the others do not. And that tells you that you can add pretty much whatever you want. Like peas. Or bell pepper. Or jalapeño. I'm going to add celery. And herbs, what the heck. Tarragon has become one of my favorite herbs. Speaking of licorice, fennel would be good too. A whole world of possibilities opens up. Sake and mirin and wakame.

You can also use better ham. Or possibly chicken or fish.

I watched 4 videos and they are all fairly obedient to ingredients while they each have their own style.

This is cultural appropriation right here. They're a rice country not a potato country. But it's what we do. We blend into each other. They adapt our food like we adapt their food. We learn from each other. We end up making coleslaw out of their cabbage. And put raisins in it. It's all good. I'm going to make this. And as this boomerangs back to America there are no rules that we cannot ignore. They're not the emperor of us.