The Best Macaroni Salad

Pay attention. We're doing macaroni salad. The BEST macaroni salad. The greatest macaroni salad in the long and surprisingly dramatic history of macaroni salad — and there's been more macaroni salad than people realize, the picnic blankets of this country have GROANED under the weight of macaroni salad for over a century, look it up, I had people look it up — and mine, the one I'm about to give you, beats them all. Not even close. It's a slaughter. People are going to cry. Big strong men, soft sweet aunts, picky teenagers, they'll all cry. Into the salad. I make people cry into FOOD. It's a gift. It's a burden. It's mostly a gift.

Now listen carefully because this is where most chefs get it WRONG. They cook the pasta al dente. They say 'firm to the bite!' They write it in italics. They put a little exclamation point. This is macaroni SALAD, not pasta primavera, you don't want firm. You want TENDER. You cook the macaroni one minute past al dente. The macaroni should be SOFT, almost surrendered, because cold pasta firms up, it gets RIGID, and if you start with al dente cold pasta you've built a salad of tiny chewy bullets. Sad. A sad chewy bullet salad. We don't do that here.

And the dressing — this is where the magic happens, this is the sauce that built civilizations, well, picnics, which are smaller civilizations but still important — the dressing is mayo, mustard, vinegar, a little sugar, and PICKLE BRINE. From the jar. The juice. You were going to pour it down the drain — STOP. Stop right there. Pickle brine is GOLD. My grandmother taught me this. She was a tough woman. She did not waste pickle brine, she did not waste BUTTER, she did not waste a single thing in her kitchen, and the neighbor who taught HER lived to be 102. Could be a coincidence. Probably not. Believe me.

This is the macaroni salad that gets REQUESTED. The one Aunt Linda asks for. The one the neighbor wants the recipe for and you politely smile and say 'oh it's nothing' and then you go home and YOU KNOW, you know in your heart, that you have built something tremendous, something that will be talked about for generations, something your great-grandchildren will demand at family reunions long after you're gone. Macaroni salad is forever. Macaroni salad is a LEGACY. Don't take it lightly. Make a double batch. Now go eat.