How to Make Easy Feta Pasta Salad | Julia at Home #healthy #food

Today I'm making orzo that has a ton of mint and some cucumbers and feta. So to get started we're going to cook the orzo for the salad. In here I have two quarts of water. Come to a boil in a pot. We're going to add some salt. A good amount of salt. A teaspoon and a half. Half teaspoon measure. So three of those. All right. In goes the orzo. That's half a pound of orzo. And now we're going to cook this until it's al dente. And that takes anywhere from eight minutes. Some brands take a little longer. You just want to keep stirring it so that orzo doesn't stick together. All right. So while that cooks, let's make a vinaigrette for the salad. Now I'm going to make the vinaigrette right in the serving bowl. Just saves me some dishes. I'm going to start with a quarter cup of fresh lemon juice. I like a good lemony orzo salad because I think that orzo, you know, it's pretty dense and having a lot of lemon juice to zip it up is a good thing. We're going to add some garlic. Now this is the rasp style grater and I'm using just two cloves of garlic. And I'm just rubbing it right against the rasp grater. You can see all that nice puree catching on the backside. I love using these graters when I'm making a vinaigrette because it really purees the garlic to a nice paste that works itself nicely into the vinaigrette. Sometimes when you're using this kind of grater, you got to take the tip of a knife and get all the puree out of the backside. All right, a little salt and pepper, about half a teaspoon of each. Half a teaspoon of salt. That's a good sound. I wish it meant dinner was ready, but not yet. All right, so there we go. Now I'm going to whisk in about five tablespoons of olive oil. I make this so often I feel like I don't really need to measure the oil much anymore. Okay, there we go. That's about five tablespoons. All right, I'm going to set that aside. Now I'm going to chop up vegetables for the salad, starting with half of a red onion. All right, just going to chop this nice and fine. There we go, half an onion, about half a cup. Into the bowl it goes. All right, now time to add a little cucumber. You want half of an English cucumber. And I'm going to leave the skin on because I like the color and I like the crunch. But I'm going to take the seeds out because they tend to get a little mushy. So cutting it in half lengthwise, I'm just going to use a spoon and just gently scrape out the seeds. All right, now we're just going to slice it crosswise into nice thin slices. All right, into the vinaigrette they go. Make sure all the pieces are nicely separated. All right, moving on to some scallion. Now the recipe calls for about a quarter cup of scallion, which depending on the size of your scallions, is about two. I love scallion though. It is my favorite thing to keep on hand. It zips up whatever you're cooking. So if I have a little extra scallion than a quarter cup, that's why. All right, into the bowl it goes. All right, next up, some fresh mint, which is really unique for this salad. I think it tastes fabulous on hot days. Again, this is a room temperature salad, so it goes with a variety of things. But if you wanted to vary up the flavors, this is how you could do it. You could substitute all sorts of fresh herbs for the mint. You could use cilantro, parsley, obviously tarragon, dill. All would taste really lovely here. All right, so obviously I washed this mint already. I'm just pulling the leaves off. So just kind of eyeing what half a cup would be after it's chopped. All right, now just running over with my knife, making some nice big chops. All right, that looks pretty good. A couple big pieces over here. All right, into the bowl it goes. All right, so now I'm just crumbling about half a cup of feta right over the top. All right, that's it for this salad. All that's left is the orzo, which is probably done cooking. That looks good. The only way to tell if it's really done, of course, is to taste it. So here, I have asbestos hands. Perfect. Just a little al dente in the middle. Now time to drain. All right, so there is the cooked orzo. Now a real trick if you're making orzo salad is you want to make sure the orzo cools very quickly so it doesn't get mushy. So what you would do, much like making a grain salad, is you spread it out on a baking sheet. This helps it cool really quickly and prevents it from overcooking because you can tell it's still hot. That pasta is still cooking. And to help prevent it from sticking together, we're just going to add about a tablespoon of olive oil. Stir that around. Now all we have to do is let this orzo cool, which takes about 15 minutes before we can combine it with the rest of the salad. All right, the orzo is good and cool. Time to marry it with the rest of its friends. I'm just going to slide it right off the baking sheet. It's not sticking to this sheet because of that oil, which is really helpful. I know it's kind of a small bowl for this. I have a habit of wanting to do everything in the serving bowl to save dishes, but it means it gets a little tight at mixing time, but I don't mind. Plus, anything that hits the floor, Ziggy the dog will be very happy about. Did you hear your name, Ziggy? Did you hear your name, buddy? Ziggy's a fan of the orzo. All right, now I'm just going to gently toss the orzo with all of the ingredients in the bottom of the bowl. That's all that mint, the cucumbers, the red onion, that pureed garlic, all that lemon juice and the feta. Oh, it smells delicious. As I said, I love this salad in the summertime. It holds like a dream and it goes with absolutely everything from barbecued chicken to salmon with potato chips. So, all right, that looks pretty good. I'm just going to set this aside for about half an hour. Let those flavors meld, but of course you could throw it in the fridge for a couple hours. All right, a little orzo salad. Oh, this is just such a good salad. Thanks for watching. What'd you think? Leave a comment below and let me know what you're excited to cook this week. And while you're at it, hit that subscribe button. You can get today's recipes and more for free at our website, americastestkitchen.com slash juliettehome.