Vegan Potato Salad Recipe

The best homemade Vegan Potato Salad recipe is perfect for summer gatherings. It’s a southern, classic recipe for egg free potato salad, combining vegan mayo and yellow mustard, tofu egg scramble, onions, and pickles. Homemade Traditional Potato Salad is a lightly sweet summer salad that’s rich and creamy! This Mustard Potato Salad Recipe is is dairy-free, egg-free and gluten-free! Vegan sour cream can be substituted for a no mayo option.

When I became vegan about 100 years ago, one of the first dishes I veganized was my mom’s recipe for classic potato salad. Because it’s the best recipe ever, I had to make mom’s potato salad vegan!

Mission accomplished!

Tofu Potato Salad No Egg

My mom served several vegetarian potato salad recipes over the years, and all of them were made with eggs. The question is: can you make the best vegan potato salad without eggs? My answer is yes!

In this recipe for potato salad, I use tofu scramble instead of eggs. Of course, you can make tofu scrambles for your breakfast toast, but you can also use tofu scramble to replace eggs in certain recipes that call for eggs, like potato salad.

This is a very simple 10-minute tofu scramble (see the link in the recipe) and you can see from the photo below it creates a very egg-like consistency. It’s perfect for this vegan red potato salad.

I also love that by adding some tofu scramble to this recipe, I’m also adding protein. It makes easy vegan potato salad recipes like this one more like a meal in and of itself.

Love Veggie Picnic Recipes?

I love family picnics but do you have to give it up after going vegan? The answer is no!

Here are some favorite vegan picnic recipes:

However, if you’re looking for a dish that will get your family excited for the next veggie barbecue or picnic, this simple non dairy potato salad needs to be on your list!

How Long to boil potatoes for potato salad

Depending on how big your potato pieces are, you should boil potatoes between 8 – 12 minutes. Stick a fork in one of the potatoes to test for doneness. The potatoes should be just fork tender. You don’t want to cook them so long that they start to fall apart.

Potato Salad Ingredients

Here are the ingredients you’ll need for this easy potato salad recipe:

red potatoes

red onions

tofu scramble

vegan mayo

yellow mustard

apple cider vinegar

agave nectar

optional: chopped celery, fresh dill.

How to Make Vegan Potato Salad

There are a few steps involved in making a good, lightly sweet potato salad vegan. Obviously, it begins with potatoes.

Step One: Boil the Potatoes

A good potato salad starts with boiling potatoes!

You can see that I choose red potatoes. I think they’re the best potatoes for potato salad because they keep a relatively firm texture after being cooked. I leave the skins on. There’s a lot of nutrients there, and we love the skins. In fact, I even leave the skins on for our vegan mashed potatoes too. Besides, it makes it easier to chop them.



I love this nutritional comparison between the skin and flesh of potatoes. Fiber is a key difference!

One of my favorite tricks for potato salad is to chop the onions and place those in the bowl while you’re waiting for the chopped potatoes cooking in the pan to get tender.

I learned this trick from my mom and the real secret to it comes from the next step: when the potatoes are tender, pour them into a strainer to remove the excess liquid and then pour the hot potatoes over the chopped onions.

That way you have onions in your potato salad, but they’re tender because they’ve been smothered by the hot potatoes. We get the best cooking tips from our moms!

I like using red onions because they have a more subtle flavor. My family is picky about their onions and I’ve found red onions work best for this veg potato salad recipe.

Step two: Make the Potato Salad Dressing

There are few ingredients that matter more than this delicious vegan potato salad mustard sauce. It’s not tricky to get it right, but there are some key ingredients involved:

vegan mayo (I use Just Mayo)

mustard (I use yellow mustard, but you can use dijon mustard)

apple cider vinegar

agave nectar

Sometimes my mom will add some of the juice from the sweet pickles too. If you do that, use it in place of the apple cider vinegar.

If you prefer a savory potato salad, simply reduce the amount of agave nectar and use dill pickles in place of sweet pickles in this recipe.

Expert Tips

Here are some expert tips to make a perfect batch of dairy free potato salad every single time:

Don’t overcook the potatoes. You want them to be just fork tender. If they cook too much, they get mushy

We leave the skins on, but if you prefer, you can peel the potatoes

Red onions have a more mellow flavor, but yellow onions will work too

Make this recipe ahead of time because it tastes better when cold (it needs at least an hour in the fridge)

That said, some people prefer warm potato salad — do what works for you

It used to be that finding vegan mayo was tricky and/or expensive, but now even Hellman’s has a vegan mayo. You can buy Just Mayo at Target and Walmart and other easily accessible stores

You can make this into easy vegan potato salad no mayo by using vegan sour cream or plain vegan yogurt in place of mayo.

In eggless potato salad recipes, you either leave out the eggs or do like and use my 10-minute tofu scramble to replace the eggs in a regular potato salad recipe

Play around with the seasonings. For example, you could add 1/2 teaspoon of dried dill to make a vegan dill potato salad

Be sure to use a plant-based mayo, such as Just Mayo, Hellman’s Vegan Mayo, or Vegenaise. I prefer the flavor of Just Mayo so that’s what I use

You can add finely chopped celery to this recipe if you’d like. It will add more crunch

Top the finished potato salad with cherry tomatoes and red onion slivers for a dramatic presentation!

What Goes With Potato Salad for a Vegan Dinner?

Here are some of my favorite dishes to create a meal plan around vegan potato salad:

The universe is back in balance when a veganized version of this one-time favorite dish is back as part of your Summer Salads options.

I hope you love this recipe as we do! Have you tried it? Be sure and leave a comment and a rating of this recipe below and then take a quick photo and share it with me using #namelymarly on Instagram. I love seeing your creations!

Vegan Potato Salad I took my mom’s recipe for potato salad and made my own vegan version of it. This is a sweet, creamy, eggless, red potato salad with lots of summertime flavors for everyone, vegan or not! 5 from 3 votes Print Pin Prep Time: 15 minutes Cook Time: 30 minutes Total Time: 45 minutes Servings: 12 Calories: 246 kcal Author: Marly Ingredients 5 – 6 small to medium red potatoes with skins, chopped

4 – 5 cups water

½ cup red onion , finely chopped

1 batch 10-minute Tofu Scramble

1 cup vegan mayo

3 tablespoons mustard

2 tablespoons apple cider vinegar

3 tablespoons sweet pickles chopped

3 – 6 tablespoons agave nectar depending on how sweet you like it

Optional – chopped celery Instructions Place the chopped potatoes in a pan. Pour in the water and bring to a boil. Cook until the potatoes are fork tender.

While you’re waiting for the potatoes to cook, place the chopped onion in a lidded container, large enough to hold the finished potato salad. I used a large, round pyrex dish.

When the potatoes are done, carefully pour them into a strainer to remove excess liquid. The water will be hot so be careful. When the potatoes are drained, pour them over the onions, and place the lid on the container to seal it. That will allow the onions to soften with the hot potatoes.

Hopefully by now you’ve already prepared your Tofu Scramble, but if you haven’t, now’s a good time to do that.

In a small bowl combine the mayo, mustard, vinegar, and sweet pickles. Stir to combine. Add one tablespoon of sugar, stir, and then take a little taste to see if it meets your expectations of sweetness. Some people, like my mom, like their potato salad a little more on the sweet side. Continue adding sugar one tablespoon at a time (or leave it as it iuntil you get it just right.

If you’d like, go ahead and add some finely chopped celery to the mix. It can make for a crunchier potato salad, but I’m not so certain I prefer the distraction from the potatoes. What I really like is adding a teaspoon or os of celery seed so I can have a little of the flavor of celery without all that annoying crunching. If you’d like to give that a try, add 1 teaspoon of celery seed to the mayo mixture.

Pour the mayo mixture over the potato salad and give it a good, gentle stir, being careful not to mash the tender potatoes. (They can be so sensitive!) Add the scrambled tofu and stir some more, until everything is well-combined.

Refrigerate, preferrably an hour or two before serving. Nutrition Facts Vegan Potato Salad Amount Per Serving Calories 246 Calories from Fat 117 % Daily Value* Fat 13g 20% Saturated Fat 1g 5% Sodium 215mg 9% Potassium 517mg 15% Carbohydrates 23g 8% Fiber 2g 8% Sugar 7g 8% Protein 4g 8% Vitamin A 45IU 1% Vitamin C 8.2mg 10% Calcium 18mg 2% Iron 0.8mg 4% * Percent Daily Values are based on a 2000 calorie diet. The nutrition information shown is an estimate provided by an online nutrition calculator and should not be considered a substitute for a professional nutritionist’s advice.

Enjoy!