Ditch the Mayo for More Flavorful Picnic Salads

I am not anti-mayonnaise. In fact, I’m hugely in favor of it, particularly on a sandwich—even a breakfast sandwich. What I am not a fan of is using it as an all-purpose crutch when preparing picnic salads (potato, chicken, egg and the like), never giving any thought as to whether or not it is the best condiment for the job.

Swiping mayo on a sandwich is an easy way to protect your bread while providing a hint of tangy creaminess, but it can be flavor-dulling in large amounts. That’s not such a bad thing when making tuna salad with water-packed, mostly flavorless fish, but I take umbrage with obscuring the earthy sweet and slightly bitter character of a potato, the savory meatiness of shredded chicken or even the perfect richness of an egg yolk.

Swapping out the mayo for something else, be it a creamy, savory mixture of miso and almonds, a starchy slurry of potato-enriched chicken broth, or a simple mixture of allium-y vinegar and mashed yolk won’t just up the flavor in your favorite picnic salads, it will make you a better cook—one who understands how to balance tastes and textures with a variety of ingredients, instead of rotely reaching for the mayo every time.

Add complex, creamy flavor with miso and almonds

Almonds have been around a lot longer than mayonnaise. Ground nuts thicken everything from Mexican mole sauces to Mediterranean romesco and Italian pesto, adding creamy body and complex flavor—something you don’t get from thick, viscous mayo. For our Miso-Ginger Chicken Salad, we omit the mayo entirely and build a tangy, blender-easy sauce with umami-packed miso paste, toasted almonds, fresh ginger, lime juice, and a little bit of honey and Dijon mustard.

Grinding the almonds releases their magic. According to Harold McGee’s “On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lore of the Kitchen,” nuts are the only dry plant material that can be fashioned into a sauce base all on their own. “When such nuts are ground into ‘butters,’ the oil provides the fluid continuous phase that lubricates the particles of cell walls and proteins,” he writes, adding “But most of the time, nuts are mixed with other ingredients, including liquids, so they become part of a complex suspension and help thicken both with their dry particles and with their oil, which becomes emulsified into tiny droplets.”

In short, the almonds thicken our chicken salad dressing two ways: The dry ground particles absorb moisture, which prevents the salad from becoming watery. This causes the particles to swell, physically impeding the flow of the sauce—essentially bulking it up. Blending the ingredients together in a high-powdered blender suspends the almond’s oil throughout the dressing in tiny droplets, which is further stabilized by the presence of Dijon—the mucilage in the outer shell of mustard seeds is an incredibly effective emulsifier.

All of this translates into a creamy dressing base that complements rather than obscures the savory flavor of the miso, the bright tanginess of the lime, and the fieriness of the ginger. Toss it with the meat from a standard rotisserie chicken, then finish it off with crunchy cucumber, scallions and handfuls of fresh cilantro.

Stop dumping valuable starch down the drain

When making potato salad, the cooking water rarely makes its way into the final product, which is too bad, because it’s packed with lovely, silky starches. Reserve it, and you won’t need any mayo. In our Austrian Potato Salad, the flavors come from the inside out and the outside in.

First, we maximize the potential in our potato-cooking liquid. Instead of plain water, we use chicken stock to infuse the spuds with a little meaty richness. The potatoes release their starches into the stock, creating a silky base for our dressing. Instead of dumping it down the drain, we reserve it, simmering it with onion and caraway for even more flavor. Pour it back over the potatoes and let it stand, stirring occasionally—the potatoes will absorb the liquid as they cool.

Next, we make a simple vinaigrette with red wine vinegar, olive oil, and Dijon mustard. The mucilage in the mustard seeds help keep the dressing emulsified; the starch from the potatoes thicken things even further, providing creamy body that tastes of potatoes and seasonings, not mayonnaise. Finish it off with aggressively sour chopped cornichons, a little hard-cooked egg, crunchy celery and fresh dill. According to Christopher Kimball, it’s “summer vacation” in a bowl.

Yolks are all you need

Egg yolks are a naturally occurring emulsion. They come out of the chicken in a state of perfect harmony, their rich fats suspended in the watery portion of the yolk. One emulsion begets another, which is why we use eggs to make mayonnaise —an emulsion of watery vinegar suspended in oil. But you can also drop the oil entirely, and emulsify tangy vinegar directly into hard-cooked egg yolks, creating dressing that celebrates the natural richness of the yolk.

But plain vinegar will not do. For our Herbed Egg Salad, we briefly marinate some finely chopped red onion in champagne vinegar, which softens the harsh bite of the allium and infuses the vinegar with flavor. Borrowing an idea from Deborah Madison’s cookbook “In My Kitchen,” the onions are strained and reserved for use as a crunchy garnish, and the flavored vinegar is emulsified directly into some of the hard-cooked egg yolks. It’s creamy but tangy, and keeps the focus on the eggs. Finished with handfuls of chives and parsley, it’s the lightest, most flavorful egg salad we’ve ever tasted.

Not everything has to be creamy

Abandoning mayo doesn’t mean sacrificing creaminess, but it should make you question the necessity of creaminess. Our favorite chicken salad forgoes rich mouthfeel in favor of crunchy texture and vibrant flavor.

In this rainbow-colored Vietnamese Chicken Salad (goi gà), shredded chicken is nestled in a spicy-sweet heap of crisp thin-sliced cabbage, carrots, basil and cilantro, and finished with crunchy peanuts. Instead of a creamy, mayo-based dressing, we use a classic, sweet chili-lime Vietnamese vinaigrette. Umami-rich fish sauce is balanced with sugar, fiery chili heat and loads of brightening citrus. “Bursting with flavor,” one reader writes—a vibrant dinner salad which “feels healthy and totally satisfying.”

Want more No-Mayo Week at Milk Street? Learn how to turn plain potatoes into the star of your picnic table; Watch Rosie Gill use miso to make a better chicken salad; And meet the Austrian potato salad that Christopher Kimball dubbed "the world’s best."

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Claire Lower

Claire Lower is the Digital Editor for Christopher Kimball’s Milk Street, with over a decade of experience as a food writer and recipe developer. Claire began writing about food (and drinks) during the blogging boom in the late 2000s, eventually leaving her job as a lab technician to pursue writing full-time. After freelancing for publications such as Serious Eats, Yahoo Food, xoJane and Cherry Bombe Magazine, she eventually landed at Lifehacker, where she served as the Senior Food Editor for nearly eight years. Claire lives in Portland, Oregon with a very friendly dog and very mean cat. When not in the kitchen (or at her laptop), you can find her deadlifting at the gym, fly fishing or trying to master figure drawing at her local art studio.