Potato Salad

I love Japanese potato salad for its colourful appearance as well as its mixture of different texture of ingredients. The smooth and creamy soft russet potatoes and the hard-boiled egg, the crunchy cucumber slices and the steamed corn kernels, plus the sunny chips of steamed carrot. 

To make the salad free from animal meat like ham or bacon, I was happy to find Ayam brand plant-based luncheon meat. The plant-based luncheon meat, which has soy protein, canola oil, oats, wheat gluten, rice flour, konjac to its main ingredient list, has a texture and flavour close to real luncheon meat. If you are not a picky eater, you may not notice the luncheon meat was made from plant-based source, when mixed in the potato salad 😉

For the better health of our bodies as well as our Planet Earth, its time to switch our diet to a greener and more sustainable way 🌱🌲🌏

Ingredients

300g russet potatoes, peeled and cut into chunks*

20g carrot, peeled and diced

50g Japanese cucumber, partially peeled, and slice thinly

20g steamed corn kernels

1 egg, about 55g

40g Yumeat luncheon meat

A few shake of pepper powder

1~2 tsp lemon juice

80~100g light sour cream +

Low-sodium salt to taste

1 tsp golden syrup, optional

* I collected about 260g of peeled potatoes.

+ you may use mayonnaise in place of sour cream.

Directions

1. Peel potatoes and cut into chunks. Soak in salt water for about 10 minutes.

2. Drain away the salt water and steam in a mini rice cooker for about 15 to 20 minutes with diced carrot till soften.

If a thin cake tester can penetrate through the center of the potato chunks easily, the potato chunks are fully cooked.

3. While the potato chunks are still hot, mash them into coarse paste. Leave some potato chunks in bigger portions for better texture.

4. While the mashed potato is still hot, sprinkle some pepper powder and add some lemon juice to it. Mix well and leave it to cool down.

5. Cut the Japanese cucumber into thin slices.

Apply a little low-sodium salt and raw sugar to the cucumber slices and wait for about 15 minutes.

Squeeze out the cucumber juice. Set aside.

6. Steam an egg for about 10 minutes in a mini rice cooker. Let it simmer for about 5 minutes till cooked through. Click the "steam an egg" to link to the procedure in detail.

You can also boil the egg in hot water, but I prefer to steam as less energy will be used to bring a small cup of water to boil as compare to a pot of water.

Peel and cut the hard-boiled egg into chunks. Set aside.

7. Dice the Yumeat plant-based luncheon meat into small cubes. Set aside.

8. Get all the ingredients ready, 

and mix them in a big mixing bowl.

Add light sour cream till it achieves your desired wetness of the salad.

Add salt to taste.

As I prefer the salad to carry a little sweetness, I added a small amount of golden syrup to it. You can keep the golden syrup out if you don't like sweetness 😅

9. Cover the salad with a cling wrap and refrigerate till serving. Enjoy 😋

Serving the cool potato salad with my meat-less lunch 😋