Pasta salad is beloved for its simplicity portability and adaptability. More of a blank slate for experimentation than an actual recipe pasta salads can be made with endless combinations of noodles vegetables cheeses proteins and sauces—ranging from vinegar-based salad dressings to creamy rich oil- or mayonnaise-based sauces. Pasta salads are easy to make high in protein and are the perfect vehicle to use up all the produce and bottles of salty olives and peppers you have in the fridge.
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How to Eat More Salads | FeelGoodFoodie
When done right there’s nothing better to enjoy at a picnic or a warm-weather dinner. When done wrong—and it can happen—even a pasta salad made with the best intentions (and an all-star lineup of ingredients) can still come out flavorless or often too spicy. While acid—whether it’s lemon juice or vinegar—is an essential ingredient for enhancing the flavors of almost any savory dish it’s easy to ruin the entire meal if you rely too heavily on vinegar to liven up a pasta salad.
The better way to approach your recipe is to think of pasta salad as a pasta dish first — not as a typical vegetable-based salad. By adopting this mindset and dressing your pasta salad with richer creamier fattier dressings instead of tossing it with vinegar and lemon juice the final creation will ultimately be more balanced satisfying and flavorful — not in-your-face-pitty.
Picture this: You’ve cooked your noodles your sauce chopped veggies like tomatoes cucumbers fresh herbs and you’ve got your feta or mozzarella cheese all set up. You’ve added your pasta salad ingredients and tossed everything together; then you do your first taste test only to find that the flavor profile is a little lacking. Thinking it could use a little spicing up you try to fix it by adding more vinegar—red wine balsamic or maybe lemon juice. Pretty soon you’ve got an overly bright spicy salad that’s vibrant in all the wrong ways leaving you with a bitter tangy dish that’s more salad than pasta. When your pasta salad flavor has reached this level there’s not much you can do to completely fix it.
