Really Good Pasta Salad That Your Potluck Deserves

Mayonnaise. Don't use mayonnaise in a pasta salad. Hi, I'm Melissa Clark. I'm a food reporter for the New York Times, and I'm here in the New York Times cooking kitchen studio to make pasta salad, the best pasta salad. Every summer gathering deserves a really good pasta salad. The thing about a pasta salad is you can tailor it to exactly your group, your taste, what you wanna serve. Pasta salad has a really bad reputation, and it shouldn't, because it should be delicious. It's pasta, it's dressing, it's vegetables, but there are so many bad ones out there, versions that use bottled dressing or overcook the pasta, but it doesn't have to be that way. When you make it, it can be fantastic. So I have my pot of boiling water here. I'm gonna add a lot of salt. You always wanna make sure to season your pasta water aggressively, because seasoning the water is what actually seasons the pasta itself. If you don't add enough salt, your pasta's gonna end up tasting bland. So that's two pinches, two big pinches. So you wanna make sure to use a short pasta for pasta salad, because it's gonna be in a big bowl. You're gonna wanna take a fork. You're gonna wanna eat it really easily. You don't wanna use a linguine or spaghetti that's gonna be hard to get on the fork. So short, thick pasta, and I'm just gonna throw them into the boiling water, and then while the pasta cooks, I'm gonna make my dressing. When the pasta's warm, it's gonna absorb more flavor than if I let the pasta cool down and added it to the dressing. And then the dressing is really simple. For this recipe, I like to use an assertively flavored red wine vinegar dressing with oregano. I'm going for like an Italian vibe, like the best pasta salad your Italian grandmother made. This is what it would taste like. I'm gonna start out grating some garlic right into the bowl. I always like to add a little bit of garlic to my pasta salad. Just one clove. You don't want it to be too pungent, but you want it to have a little bit of a bite. And now I have red wine vinegar, again, because I want an assertive flavor. If you want it milder, you can always substitute lemon juice. You could substitute white wine vinegar. Cider vinegar is really good. This is oregano, so this is also what gives it that Italian-American flavor. And then pinch of salt, some black pepper. And whenever I make a vinaigrette or a dressing, I always add my vinegar, my garlic, and I let the garlic sit in the vinegar just for like 30 seconds. The vinegar is taking that sharpness out of the garlic. It's making it slightly mellower, and it's also dissolving the salt. And now I add the olive oil. Just adding it slowly, seeing if I can get a nice emulsification. If you can't, doesn't matter, because honestly, you're gonna toss the pasta in anyway. So for this kind of salad, you want to use, you don't want to use your like super fine, like really expensive olive oil, but you don't want to use your cooking oil. I'm gonna just use something that's good. Something, I mean, any oil that you'd be happy to use on a salad at home, that's the perfect dressing for this. I don't know, are you a household? Do you have one kind of olive oil, two kinds of olive oil, three kinds of olive oil? I have friends who have like half a dozen different kinds of olive oil, and each one is for a different thing. At our house, we have two. We have the good one and the cooking one. And then you just want to give it a taste always before you add your pasta, make sure it's balanced. Taste for salt. Needs a little more pepper, actually. It's a little like you don't really get the pepper, so. Okay, let's check the pasta, shall we? I want it to have a little bit of a spine. It should be al dente, not mushy, and we are here. I'm gonna drain it right in the sink. So I'm just giving the pasta a little stir to make sure it's not sticking. I don't want it to stick to itself. And now just stir it up so that the pasta is coated with the dressing. And then I'm gonna let it cool in the dressing, and as the pasta cools, it's gonna absorb all of those great flavors. And meanwhile, I'm gonna get all the other ingredients ready. They're just gonna give you a little tour of what I'm gonna add to the pasta salad. So I have cucumbers here. I have some salami that I'm gonna slice up. Tomatoes, beautiful herbs. These are Kalamata olives. Sliced onion, mozzarella, and then just a little more vinegar, olive oil, and salt just to adjust the flavors right at the end. This is very versatile, very adaptable. Use whatever ingredients you want. You want sturdy vegetables or cooked vegetables, nothing that's gonna get too wilty if it's sitting in the dressing for a long time. I'm gonna start with my tomatoes. So for the cherry tomatoes, I'm just gonna halve them because they're nice and small. If you get those big cherry tomatoes or the grape tomatoes, you could cut them in quarters. I love the little Persian cucumbers because they are very crisp. They have a great texture that holds up well. But any kind of cucumber. If you have those big cucumbers with a lot of seeds, this is a time when you do wanna take the seeds out because you don't wanna add any extra water into this mix. And you can cut your cucumbers into slices. You can cut them into cubes. You really do wanna keep some texture for all of these vegetables. You don't wanna cut them too thin. You want the textural contrast. You know, you want that little bit of crunch. So salami. If you don't wanna have meat in your pasta salad, just leave it out. If you don't like salami, you could use bacon. It's really good. You could use prosciutto. I'm using a very mild soppressata. If you buy salami that's pre-sliced in the supermarket, that will work. That's perfectly fine. But I like to slice it myself because I want it a little bit thicker. Again, I'm looking for the textures. So a good way to slice these, you can make little stacks. And then I'm just gonna slice them into little batons. And that way, when you're spearing it with a fork, you can actually grab hold of it. I'm just gonna throw it in with my veg. Then I have my herbs. I have some chopped parsley and basil. I'm just gonna tear the basil into the salad at the last minute. So let's take the temperature of this pasta. It can be lukewarm, but it can't be any warmer than lukewarm. Because again, if we add all of these nice, crisp, crunchy vegetables and onions, it would all wilt in the herbs. So say that you're in a hurry and you're making this and you wanna rush out of the house and you need to take it with you, you can take the coated pasta, just put it out on a baking sheet, like a rimmed baking pan, and throw it in the fridge and let it cool down. And it'll cool down more quickly. And now we're just gonna toss it together. So I've got my veg and my salami. We really need a bigger bowl here. So this is something that I do at home all the time. I always put stuff in a bowl that's just a little too small. Start with a nice big bowl so you have room for tossing. So my olives, some sliced red onion. Really gives just such a nice sweet crunch. And I have a little bocconcini here. Sometimes when I buy these, these are really small and they're lovely. So I'm not even gonna, I'm just gonna put them right in. But if you get the bigger ones, or if you have like a big ball of mozzarella, just tear it. Tear it into pieces and throw it right in. Be sure to use fresh mozzarella. It's a game changer. It just makes it so much creamier and milkier in the salad. It's really nice. Parsley. The herbs are the most delicate part of this whole salad. Of everything that you're adding, the herbs really want to go in as close to serving time as possible. You can do it a couple of hours ahead. I mean, it's actually fine. But if you want the freshest, brightest flavor, sometimes what I do is I put everything into the salad except the herbs, keep them on the side, and then I'll just throw them in right before serving. I'm using a lot of herbs, like a cup of herbs, because herbs are the kind of thing that get lost in a pasta salad. There's so much going on. You wanna make sure, they wanna have their say. I am tearing it because when you tear basil, there's less of a chance it'll turn black. So when you are tasting the salad at this point, don't pick up a piece of pasta to taste it. Pick up a tomato or a cucumber because those are the elements that are gonna really need more seasoning because you haven't seasoned them yet. And I'm gonna taste a tomato. Tomatoes always taste good. It's so good, but it does need a little more salt. And I'm also gonna add just a little more vinegar. I will add more oil, but right at the end. That's another thing. When you're seasoning, as you go, don't add the oil until the end because you want the salt and the vinegar to really be able to just get into the vegetables, into the pasta, and you want the salt to dissolve and the oil will impede the salt dissolving. Pasta salad is, I mean, what can't you serve with pasta salad? Pasta salad is a meal unto itself. You can serve pasta salad with anything you'd serve at a picnic. You know what's really good with pasta salad or after pasta salad? My lemon poppy seed pancake. All right, I'm looking at that mozzarella. It's just a really good pasta salad. There's nothing fancy here. The pasta is perfectly al dente. The salami is just meaty and brawny. You've got the creaminess of the cheese, the juiciness of those tomatoes, and that crunch of the cucumber. It just all works. And the olive, don't forget the olive. That little je ne sais quoi of the olive, or however you say that in Italian. It's delicious. I mean, it's just the really good pasta salad that your picnic deserves. Pasta salad is the ultimate crowd pleaser. Everyone loves a pasta salad when it's good. And if you make this recipe, it's going to be good. You can find this recipe for really good pasta salad along with thousands of other recipes at nytcooking.com or just click that link below. See ya. Leave us a comment. We love to hear from you.