Pesto pasta is a classic combination. While it’s often served warm and with a side of garlic bread turning pesto into a dressing for cold pasta salad is another easy way to enjoy this tasty combination. Perfect for potlucks and backyard barbecues pasta salad is a staple. Whether you keep it light with tangy feta crisp red onions and refreshing cucumbers or give it a Caprese twist with juicy cherry tomatoes fragrant basil and creamy mozzarella this delicious dish is easy to make ahead of time. And while pasta salad is typically dressed with a vinaigrette or mayonnaise-based sauce adding pesto to the dressing is a great way to enhance it with nutty herby flavors.
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 Great Home Ideas | 2022-08-17 11:45:02 |  2,714 Views |
Pesto Pasta Salad | FOOD | Great Ideas for Home
As with any dish it’s possible to make mistakes when preparing pasta salad. There’s a right way and a wrong way to add dressing especially when it comes to pesto. The classic Italian summer condiment aptly named for its ground-up ingredients is surprisingly delicate considering the brute force required to make it. As it turns out two of pesto’s key ingredients—olive oil and basil—don’t hold up well when exposed to heat. While you should never dress your pasta salad while it’s still hot as this can cause it to become soggy it’s important to specifically avoid this with a pesto-based dressing. Otherwise your dish may turn an unpleasant brown color instead of bright green and won’t taste nearly as good. Here’s what you need to know to avoid this culinary faux pas.
Since pesto is often spooned over hot pasta from gnocchi to penne it might seem counterintuitive that you shouldn’t add it to fresh noodles. Unlike marinara or alfredo however the sauce doesn’t look or taste as good when exposed to high temperatures. A fairly delicate herb basil loses its bright color and flavor when cooked which breaks down the cell walls of the fresh leaves. This can cause the sauce to brown and take on a muted sometimes unpleasant flavor. (Ever notice that leftover pesto changes color even in the fridge? That’s because the broken cells of ground basil oxidize—a process you can slow down with a simple olive oil storage trick.)
So before you add pesto dressing to pasta salad you should always let the pasta cool first. Leaving it in a colander until it reaches room temperature should be enough. But there are other ways to speed up the process. For example you can quickly cool pasta for pasta salad using a baking sheet; simply spread the noodles out over a large surface area so that the air can reach them more evenly. Whatever happens you should never cool pasta by rinsing it under cold water after cooking as this can toughen it and wash away the starch that would otherwise make the dressing stick to each piece.
