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This vegan potato salad is not only the prettiest thing you can bring to a picnic, party, or BBQ, but it also has a secret ingredient, making it the yummiest as well. If you like colors, unicorns, and magic, this recipe is for you.

This recipe makes 12 servings of vegan pastel rainbow potato salad.

Table of Contents

(click the links below to skip to the section you’re looking for)

• Recipe
• Frequently Asked Questions
• Ingredient Substitutions
• Nutritional Information
• Contact Me with Questions
• Similar Recipes

Who doesn’t love potato salad? Well, I guess maybe people who hate mayo might not like it. But, overall, I think we can agree that when you go to a BBQ, picnic, potluck, or any other occasion where food is being eaten outdoors, potato salad and macaroni salad are the best things on the menu.

I made this pastel colored vegan potato salad for a backyard social distance baby shower tea party picnic, so that’s why I chose pink and blue for my colors. You can get creative and make them all the colors of the rainbow or just choose certain colors based on what you like. You can call it unicorn potato salad and add glitter to the tops if you want. I’ll admit that more than one person may have thought this was ambrosia salad when they first saw it, but I grew up in California, so I don’t think I’ve ever had ambrosia salad, much less know how to make it. So, that being said, I guess this could also be an April Fool’s joke menu item.

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Ingredients for Pastel Vegan Potato Salad Recipe

(jump to the substitutions section to see ingredient details and suggestions for substitutions)

• 7 pounds red potatoes or yukon gold potatoes
• 1 teaspoon sea salt
• 8 cups water (just enough to cover the potatoes)
• 1 ⅓ cups of vegan mayonnaise
• 1 cup pickled celery, finely diced
• ½ teaspoon sea salt
• ½ teaspoon onion powder
• ½ teaspoon garlic powder
• 1 teaspoon dill
• ⅛ - ¼ teaspoon black pepper (optional)
• vegan food coloring

How to Make Pastel Vegan Potato Salad

total time: 45 minutes

Cut 7 pounds of potatoes into rectangles. If you don’t need your potato salad to be in perfect little cubes, you can just peel your potatoes and cut them into any shape pieces. But my fancy friends requested perfect cubes, so I used all the parts of the potatoes I cut off to make mashed potatoes (because I’m not a waster).

Add vegan food coloring to half of the water in a large or medium sized pot. I added a few drops of wilton rose gel color for my first pot and a few drops of wilton sky blue gel color for my second pot.

Add ½ teaspoon salt to the colored water.

Add half of the potato cubes to the colored water and bring to a boil.

Boil the potatoes for 9 minutes. Don’t set the timer until the water starts to boil. While they cook, you can prepare your next color of water.

Repeat these steps with the remaining potatoes, using a different color of food coloring.

Drain the cooked potatoes using a colander.

Mix 1 ⅓ cups of vegan mayo, 1 cup of finely diced pickled celery (or dill pickle and celery), ½ teaspoon pink sea salt , ½ teaspoon onion powder, ½ teaspoon garlic powder, 1 teaspoon dill, and ⅛ - ¼ teaspoon (optional) pepper in a large bowl.

Add the cooled potatoes and mix the vegan potato salad with a silicone spatula until they’re evenly coated.

Chill the vegan potato salad until you’re ready to serve it. Since I was making this vegan potato salad for a social distance picnic baby shower, I went ahead and spooned it into the little punch cups at this point and wrapped them with cling wrap .

FAQ

How much potato salad do you make per person?

Depending on the people, how much they love potato salad, and how many other items are on the menu, 1/2 cup to 1 cup of potato salad is a good amount for each person. This recipe makes 12 servings of vegan potato salad that are 1/2 cup each.

How much potato salad would you make for 50 people?

If you’re like me and constantly worried about running out of food, then I would make 35-40 cups of vegan potato salad for 50 people. For that amount of potato salad, you should multiple this vegan potato salad recipe by 6.

Why is my potato salad watery?

Do you remember the step in this vegan potato salad recipe where we drained the cooked potatoes using a colander? Sometimes, colanders don’t have enough holes or don’t have the right placement of holes, and you may have a colander like that. What I recommend in this case is to swirl the colander around in circles and tilt it as well. You basically want to take the potatoes on a carnival ride. I never take boiled potatoes out of my colander until I can move the colander around and zero water is coming out.

What kind of mayo is vegan?

There are countless brands of vegan mayo, but I will list my favorite brands here only because I don’t want to recommend a brand of vegan mayonnaise that I haven’t tried and loved. My 3 favorite brands of vegan mayo are Just Mayo, Follow Your Heart, and Wildwood Aioli.

My mom always put red onion in her potato salad recipe but yours doesn’t have that. Why not?

I personally do not care for raw onion in anything so you’ll notice that none of the recipes on this website call for raw onion (not even green onion). However, I do recommend using onion powder to replace that onion flavor that the red onion adds to potato salad. If you really like red onion in your potato salad, please do add it. Just dice it finely when you dice your celery and add it.

Can I use fresh dill in place of dried dill?

Definitely! I don’t normally have fresh herbs in my kitchen, but if you do, please use fresh dill! Just make sure you use a lot. I would reccomend using 1-2 tablespoons. An abundance of dill makes a potato salad sooooo good (I learned this from enjoying the potato salad at the Butcher’s Son in Berkeley), so do not skimp.

Can I use olive oil in place of vegan mayo?

German potato salad recipes often use olive oil and mustard rather than mayo. If you don’t mind not having a creamy vegan potato salad and you’re not concerned with it looking as cute, then you can certainly replace the vegan mayonnaise in this recipe with olive oil and mustard to your preferred taste.

I’ve heard of people soaking the boiled potatoes in lemon juice or apple cider vinegar. Do you recommend that?

I know that soaking your boiled potatoes in apple cider vinegar or lemon juice is a popular trend at the moment, but I haven’t tried it. If you try it, please let me know what you thought! You can message me through instagram or email me anytime.

Can I freeze leftover potato salad?

I do not recommend freezing leftover potato salad. Instead, I recommend sharing it with friends, family, and neighbors. People love being gifted food, especially if they don’t love to cook.

Can I use dill pickle relish in place of the diced dill pickles in this recipe?

Sure! That sounds like a great shortcut!

Ingredient Substitutions

• Potatoes: I recommend using red potatoes or yukon gold potatoes. If all you have is russet, you can use those.
• Salt: I use pink sea salt because it has trace minerals in it, but you can use any salt.
• Vegan Mayo: My favorite mayo was discontinued. It was the garlic aioli from Wildwood. Luckily, there are other options. Veganaise is the oldest vegan mayo. They were around before I went vegan 25 years ago. Trader Joes sells a couple different ones, but I think they’re both gross. Hampton Creek finally started making their just mayo again!
• Pickled Celery If you’re not the kind of person who just has pickled celery on hand, you can replace the cup of pickled celery with ½ cup diced dill pickles plus ½ cup diced celery. At some point though, I need to convince you to have pickled celery in your fridge at all times. This post about celery juice benefits has convinced me that all celery is healthy, so I’m assuming that pickled celery is too.
• Onion Powder: If you don’t mind the taste of raw onion, you can replace the onion powder in this recipe with 1-2 tablespoons of finely diced onion. You can also just omit the onion powder entirely.
• Garlic Powder: If you have garlic salt but not garlic powder, you can use 1 teaspoon of garlic salt in place of the garlic powder and the salt in this recipe. You can also just omit the garlic powder entirely.
• Dill: If you have access to fresh dill, use a tablespoon of fresh dill in place of the teaspoon of dried dill.
• Food Coloring: I used wilton gel colors for this recipe, but you can look at my entire list of vegan food coloring for other options.

Nutrition Facts

• Servings: 12
• Calories per serving: 491
• Protein per serving: 7g
• Calcium per serving: 96g
• Iron per serving: 6mg
• Potassium per serving: 2,558mg
• Fat per serving: 16g
• Cholesterol per serving: 0g
• Sodium per serving: 757mg
• Total Carbohydrate per serving: 83g
• Dietary Fiber per serving: 11g
• Total Sugars per serving: 4g

Comments or Questions?

If you make this recipe, I would love it if you’d snap a pic, post to instagram, and tag me @vegandollhouse. It seriously makes my day/week/month!

Please message me (instagram or email) if you have any questions or feedback about the recipe.

Similar Recipes

If you like colorful potato recipes, you might also like my deviled potatoes.

If you like colorful picnic food, you might also like my rainbow pasta salad and my hot dog on a stick recipes.

If you like recipes with dill, check out my dill pickle popcorn and my vegan ranch dressing.

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