Olivier Salad – Russian Potato Salad with Tuna, eggs, onions, pickles, cucumbers, corn, green peas, and fresh dill.
What is Olivier Salad?
Olivier Salad is a traditional Russian potato salad made with cooked potatoes, cooked carrots, eggs, pickles, green peas, diced ham or chicken. The mayo combined with mustard is usually used as a salad dressing.
My version of Olivier salad uses tuna instead of ham or chicken. The addition of ingredients like cucumber, dill and tuna makes this salad exceptionally fresh! And, all the flavors work really well together! This salad keeps well refrigerated for several days and only gets better the next day, as all the ingredients mingle together into a real comfort food!
Make sure that all the ingredients are finely chopped. That way, you can get EVERYTHING (potatoes, eggs, peas, cucumber, pickles, carrots, corn) – in ONE BITE!
Cook’s tips:
- If you like your potato salad to have more “bang” to it, try adding more finely chopped pickles after you mixed everything.
- When adding mayo to the salad, you can use smaller amount of mayo than the recipe calls for as the salad gets moister as it sits.
- This salad is a great way to use any leftover cooked meat: chicken, turkey, beef, ham is a popular choice. Or, omit meat altogether to make it vegetarian!
A little history about Olivier Potato Salad
This potato salad is one of the most famous Russian recipes, also known as Olivier salad. The salad was actually created by a very popular Belgian chef with the last name of Olivier for his upscale and super popular Moscow restaurant in the late 1800’s. Chef Olivier would create everything for this salad from scratch, including mayo (I’m pretty sure you couldn’t buy store-bought mayo back then :)). I have to credit my friend for giving me an idea to use tuna in this salad – it’s really good here and a lighter version of a regular Olivier salad. Enjoy!
In addition to regular potato salad ingredients (potatoes, eggs, mayonnaise) this Olivier salad recipe uses some nice extras: fresh peas (well, frozen, but thawed and cooked), fresh cucumber, a little bit of pickles, cooked carrots, corn, and a touch of dill!
- 4 potatoes , boiled and peeled
- 2 carrots , boiled and peeled
- 4 eggs , hard-boiled, peeled
- 1/2 onion
- 3 pickles
- 2 cucumbers
- 8 oz yellow corn , from the can
- 1/2 lb canned tuna
- 12 oz peas , frozen
- 1/2 cup mayo
- salt and pepper to taste
- 1 tablespoon fresh dill finely chopped
- Finely dice potatoes, carrots, eggs, onion, pickles, cucumbers into very small cubes.
- Cook frozen peas in boiling water, according to package instructions. (should take you just a couple of minutes) – drain of all water and pat dry.
- Shred tuna finely or dice it finely.
Combine all these ingredients, including yellow corn, in a large bowl, add mayo and mix to combine, carefully stirring the salad so that the ingredients are evenly coated, and making sure that all ingredients stay whole.
Do not add all of mayo at once – add as much as you need. Season with salt and pepper, dill. Keep in mind that the salad get moister as it sits – another good reason not to add too much mayo but just enough to coat the ingredients. The salad gets even better the next day.
Hi julia i like yr potatoe salad with tuna I wil try and make it,
Hi Julia!
This salad sounds delicious and I am planning to make it very soon. How long did you boil the potatoes (until fork-tender?) and more importantly, the carrots? Also, did you boil both whole and with the skins on, then peeled and chopped after? Thanks!
Allison
Allison, I boil the potatoes until fork-tender. I prefer lower starch, waxy potatoes for salads (not Russet potatoes). I cook carrots until very tender, as well. I boil potatoes with skins on and peel them after they cool off a little bit, and I boil carrots with skins off and then just chop them. 🙂
I love a good potato salad and yours looks devine! I love how you added tuna to it. Makes me feel like summer is right around the corner. 🙂
Dear Julia, love the salad, of course, the best salad in a world-))) In St. Petersburg very often we used chicken in a salad and was “Stolichney Salad”.
Hugs,
Yelena
How interesting, Yelena. I was just reading about the history of olivier salad and it mentioned that “Stolinchney Salad” was a “simpler” version of an original Olivier salad. Of course, all homemade versions of Olivier are pretty simple! 🙂 Just a lot of dicing! 🙂
Such a refreshing salad after the Holidays. And so colorful for a potato salad!
What a delicious looking meal in one Julia. I love recipes with history like this one.
What a great lunch idea! Easy to make ahead and pack and grab in the morning! An marvelous recipe Julia!
This would be wonderful to eat – with a little taste of everything in each bite!
Love your addition of tuna to it! Once when I was little, a friend made me a baked potato and topped it with tuna and mayo – it was so. so. good!
Yum!! I love potato salad and tuna salad, and I bet they are delicious together!
I see you are back at ’em after the holidays! This salad looks delicious! I’ve never heard of this particular type of potato salad but I do love a good historical back-story!
I’ll have to whip this up after this insanely cold weather leaves!