Pasta Salad Season

If there were a summer food popularity contest, pasta salads might just take top honors. Their assets are obvious. First and foremost they’re crowd-pleasers, appealing to toddlers, grandparents, and everyone in between. Pasta salads are also simple to make ahead and pull out of the fridge before dinner or tote along to a barbecue or picnic. Finally, they are infinitely customizable. Recently, I developed a few pasta salad recipes for iVillage that I wanted to share: Southwestern pasta salad with black beans and cilantro, Italian tuna pasta salad, soba noodle salad with chicken, Greek-style pasta salad, and Caprese pasta salad. Here’s the link.—

Each of these five globe-spanning salads features three main components: the pasta, the dressing, and the add-ins, usually veggies, herbs, and/or protein. Knowing that makes it easy to create your own pasta salads. The steps are simple:

1. Cook the pasta — short shapes like penne or rigatoni work best for pasta salads. Drain and rinse in cold water. This keeps the pasta from sticking.

2. Whisk together some sort of dressing. It can be as simple as olive oil, balsamic vinegar, salt and pepper. Taste it and adjust the seasonings per your taste.

3. Decide on your add-ins — it could be tofu cubes, roasted chicken, tuna, basil, cherry tomatoes, cooked broccoli, beans, cheese cubes… the list is virtually endless. Many veggies can be added raw, although if they’re harder, like cauliflower, it’s best to blanch or roast them first.

4. Stir the add-ins and the dressing into the pasta. Taste for seasoning and enjoy!

Don’t feel like you need to overload your pasta with add-ins. My general rule of thumb is one protein and/or cheese, two veggies, a bean, and an herb.

–Jenna Helwig, Rosaberry