Easy Pasta Salad Recipe (2024)

FAQs

What are the five mistakes to avoid pasta salad? ›

Meet your new summer bestie: A stupidly easy pasta salad with pasta, juicy tomatoes, fresh mozzarella, red onion, salami, olives, herbs, and a drench of quick homemade dressing.

→ Follow this tip: While it will stay good for a couple days, it's best to make pasta salad the day of or the day before you plan to eat it.

Italian dressing is a must for making the cold pasta salads that accompany picnics and potlucks. The best dressing for these recipes, according to our Test Kitchen, is Kraft Zesty Italian Dressing. Opening up a bottle, you'll find it's a classic grocery store-style Italian dressing.

The starch in the water is what helps the sauce adhere to your pasta. The only time you should ever rinse your pasta is when you are going to use it in a cold dish like a pasta salad or when you are not going to use it immediately. In those cases, rinsing the pasta helps to stop the cooking process.

Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil. Prepare the pasta according to the package directions, or cook slightly more than al dente. Drain pasta, do not rinse, and toss with ½ cup of the prepared dressing in a large shallow bowl. Let cool for at least 15 minutes until pasta reaches room temperature.

Our how-to step-by-step will yield a pound of all-egg pasta, and you only need three ingredients that you probably already have on hand: flour, salt, and eggs (2 cups of unbleached flour, 3 large eggs, and a half-teaspoon of salt).

In addition to the mayonnaise and sour cream, we use these ingredients: Yellow mustard adds a bit of color and rounds out the flavor of the dressing nicely. We usually use Dijon mustard in our recipes, but just like when making our potato salad, we prefer regular yellow mustard for the best pasta salad.

Pasta salad can be a healthy meal option if it contains a variety of vegetables, lean protein, and a dressing that is low in saturated fat and added sugars. However, if the pasta salad is made with high-fat meats, cheese, and a creamy or oil-based dressing, it can be high in calories, saturated fat, and sodium.

When you're making cold pasta salads, it's helpful to rinse your cooked pasta because it's going to lower the temperature of the pasta, which is ideal given that it's going to be served chilled — often alongside other cool and/or raw ingredients.

Why does my pasta salad taste weird? ›

Vinegar and other acidic ingredients do strange things to the flavor of pasta when used in salad-level amounts. Ever notice an irritating acerbic aftertaste just about every time you've eaten pasta salad? That's the vinegar announcing itself, and it's not pleasant.

If you've ever prepared potato salad and made sure to toss the potatoes in their dressing while they were still hot (via Epicurious), remember that the same technique applies to pasta salad, too. In both instances, the warm, starchy ingredients will better absorb their dressing, resulting in a more flavorful salad.

Ranch Dressing

The ranch is hands down America's most beloved salad dressings. It is made from a number of ingredients such as buttermilk, mayonnaise, mustard, garlic, onion, chives, salt, and pepper. A creamier and richer version often features sour cream or yogurt for enhanced taste.

Italian dressing makes a better alternative than many other higher-calorie options. It adds taste to salad and offers good fat. Though many calories come from fats, it is better than primarily cream-based dressings like ranch, a thousand island, or blue cheese.

Bhofack2/Getty Images. Olive Garden has two versions of its salad dressing: signature Italian and Light Italian. The signature Italian is a vinaigrette, but instead of olive oil and balsamic vinegar as you might expect, it's made with soybean oil and distilled vinegar.

But today, I am going to teach you how to make a salad without using a recipe so you, too, can become a salad artist. Sound like a deal? There are five elements to a perfect salad: greens, sweetness, creaminess, crunchiness, and dressing.