BEST MACARONI SALAD | healthy, deli-style recipe

Hello my friends, it's Dani, and today I'm showing you how to make a simple, healthy macaroni salad. This is a deli-style recipe that would be a great side dish for a barbecue or a cookout, but also works really well for meal prep because it's substantial enough to hold up as a main meal as well. So the first thing I'm going to do is prepare the pasta. You need 12 ounces of elbow macaroni. Now you could do a traditional pasta, you could do a lentil or a chickpea pasta if you wanted some more protein, or you could do what I am doing today and use a brown rice pasta which is also naturally gluten-free. I find that the brown rice pasta is a little bit heartier and it holds up a little bit better than the lentil and the chickpea pastas in a recipe like this one. So I have a large pot of salted water coming up to a boil, and to that I am going to add in my pasta, and this pasta needs to cook anywhere between 8 and 10 minutes. Whatever type of pasta you're using, the key is that you want to cook it until it's just al dente, so that it has a little bit of bite to it. This way as it cools down, it doesn't get too soft and it really holds up in your salad. Once it's done, I just drain out my pasta, then I'll transfer it back into the pot, give it a drizzle of olive oil and a quick stir just to make sure that the pasta doesn't stick. And then I'm going to get all of that pasta into a nice big bowl and we're going to add all of our veggies. First veggie I have is a half a cup of finely diced red onion. Remember, the easiest way to dice your onion is to cut off the stem side of the onion, lay it down flat, slice it in half, remove this papery outer layer, then lay the onion flat side down and create a checkerboard by making horizontal slices and then coming over the top for vertical slices, and then slicing straight down. Then I have a half a cup of finely diced celery. I just trim off the ends of my celery, slice the celery into long strips, then come back across the other way to make a nice fine dice. Then I have half a cup each of a yellow and an orange bell pepper. Now you could use all one color, but I find using more color just makes the salad that much more beautiful and much more appealing to eat as well. Then I'm adding one third of a cup of finely diced gherkins pickles. These are the little, tiny, bright, tangy pickles, and they add such a great flavor to this salad. And then finally I'm adding three chopped up hard-boiled eggs, which not only add great flavor and texture, but they also give us a great boost of protein as well. And my go-to cooking technique for hard-boiled eggs is to get the eggs into a small pot, then I cover them with some water coming about one inch above the eggs, bring everything up to a boil, turn off the heat, and then cover the pot and let it sit on the stove for nine minutes. From here I just drain the water out of the pot, get all the eggs back into the pot, fill it with cold water and a big fat handful of ice cubes, and just let that sit on the counter for about five minutes. What that does is it shocks the eggs, they get really cold, and then what they do is they pull away from the shell and you will end up with eggs that peel super easily. Then I like to make a nice creamy dressing for this salad. So I start with one half cup of mayonnaise, and I like to look for an avocado-based mayonnaise. This is an easy way to level up the ingredients that you're using. Then I add a half a cup of plain Greek yogurt. Again, this both lightens the salad up and adds a little more protein. Keep in mind though, you could make this salad with all mayo or all yogurt. So as always, pick whatever suits your personal preferences and your dietary needs. Then in goes one teaspoon of honey, that's just going to round out the flavors a bit. Two teaspoons of Dijon mustard, one fat clove of crushed garlic, and then I have a half a teaspoon of sea salt and a quarter teaspoon of black pepper. In you go. Gently whisk this all together, make sure it's mixed really well and you have this beautiful creamy dressing. And then I am just going to take this salad dressing and drizzle it right over the top of the vegetables and the pasta. From here, you're just going to get in there and stir it really well. Now you're going to notice as you're stirring it that it looks super duper creamy and that's because it is. And the reason for that is that as this salad sits for a bit, that pasta begins to absorb some of that dressing. So it really ends up being perfectly balanced. So good. I just love the creamy texture of the salad with all of the fresh veggies and then that al dente bite from the macaroni. It is so good. Now you can easily enjoy this salad immediately, it is delightful, or transfer it into an airtight container where it will happily last in your fridge for up to five days. And keep in mind, you can easily elevate this to a main meal by stirring in some canned tuna, some canned salmon, or even some fresh chopped chicken because that's going to help to keep you satiated for a longer period of time. So as always, I'm super excited for you to give this recipe a try and if you enjoy easy healthy recipes just like this, please take a moment to like this video, subscribe to the channel, and hit that notification bell so you never miss a new recipe. And if you know anybody else in your life that wants to make healthy eating easy, please feel free to share this with them as well. Thank you so much for watching. I'm Dani Spees and I'll see you back here next time with some more clean and deliciousness. Cheers! Alright, 3, 2, 1, boom. Hello my friends, it's Dani. Ready? Wait. Hello my friends, it's Dani. Last time. 3, 2, 1. Hello my friends, it's Dani. This would be a boop. Hello my friends, it's Dani and did that work or no?