Cold Pasta Salad Recipe

Posted on | June 9, 2008

Cold Pasta Salad Recipe

Here is my recipe for a quick and easy cold pasta salad.  For this recipe, you can use pre-cooked pasta noodles like Rigatoni or Penne, I prefer to use fresh pasta, but if you are in a hurry your leftover pasta will work fine.

The most important part of cold pasta salads is the dressing or marinade that you decide to use.  My personal favourite is a Dijon mustard with honey-garlic.  Here is how to make the dressing:

In a saucepan on LOW heat, put in 2 tbsp of butter.  Once it has started to melt, add 1 tbsp of chopped fresh garlic.  Let that warm in the saucepan for about 5 minutes.  Now add 2 tbsp of your favorite honey, and last 1 tbsp of Dijon mustard.  Slowly blend the ingredients together in the pan and turn off the heat.

Once the ingredients have cooled a little, pour them into a silver bowl and add 1/2 cup of mayonnaise.  Using a wooden spoon, blend the ingredients into each other.

For the ’salad’ part of your cold pasta salad, you can use whatever vegetables you have leftover in the fridge.  I prefer to use red onion, celery, carrots, green and red pepper and chives.  I first warm all of those veggies together in a pan with a little butter, then toss them in a bowl with about 4 cups of cold pasta.  Mix all of that together and then add your dressing and mix together.  Last, chop 1/8 cup of FRESH oregano or basil and stir it into your mix.  This will give your salad a freshness with a little Italian cuisine falir!

This cold pasta salad should be refrigerated for at least one hour before serving, as it helps all of the flavors to ‘meld’.  You can keep this pasta salad in the fridge for up to a week.   Hope you enjoy my recipe for cold pasta salad, and remember, if you try it, let me kow how it works out for you!

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