Fully Loaded Italian Pasta Salad With Homemade Dressing

In this video, I'm going to show you how to make Italian deli-style pasta salad. Most of my recipes get tested over the course of a couple of weeks, but this recipe has been tested on and off for about 10 years or so, and I think it's close to perfect. It's salty, sweet, tart, cheesy, nostalgic, and unlike most other pasta salad, the pasta itself tastes great, and that's thanks to a restaurant trick that most home cooks don't know about. To make this thing, I'm going to grab roughly 2,000 grams of water, or about two quarts, and pour it into a medium saucepan. Then, I'll add in 45 grams of salt. From here, I'm going to drop this pot on the stove real quick and bring it up to a rip and boil, and if you're wondering, no, you definitely don't have to measure out your water and salt to make good pasta salad, but when you do, this is one of those small details that can make a good pasta salad great, so I think it's worth it. Now, while that water boils, let's quickly make the dressing. To do that, into a high-sided container, I'm going to add 20 grams of rinsed red onion. Rinsing them once they're cut just gets rid of some of that harsh, sulfury edge that's going to give you onion breath for many hours to come. Then, I'm going to add in one garlic clove, which is somewhere in the ballpark of about five grams or so, then 15 grams of chopped red bell pepper. This is kind of like the secret ingredient for this entire dressing, and it's the thing that makes it taste like Olive Garden or Wishbone Italian dressing. Without it, it kind of just tastes like standard issue wine-based vinaigrette, which is fine, but it doesn't do that nostalgic thing that hits that spot in your brain that says Italian restaurant. Then I'll add in 25 grams of grainy mustard. This is the emulsifier that's going to help hold this dressing together so that it sits really silky and luxurious on the outside of the pasta. Then I'll add in 25 grams of red wine vinegar and 45 grams of white distilled. I'm not using all red wine vinegar here, just because if I did that, the dressing would be very dark purple, reddish pink, and it would make the pasta salad that color, which isn't very appetizing. The white distilled vinegar brings the exact same amount of acid, just in a clean, colorless format. Then I'm going to add in a quarter teaspoon of dried oregano, quarter teaspoon of dried basil, and then a quarter teaspoon each of red pepper flake and ground black pepper. Then 15 grams of sugar and five grams of salt. From here, I'm going to grab an immersion blender, drop it in, and I'm going to spin this until everything is nicely broken down, especially the aromatic vegetables. You don't want something that's super chunky here. If you don't have an immersion blender, by the way, you can use a regular blender, but this batch size is probably going to be a little bit too small to get the blades to catch everything, so you probably want to make a two times batch, which is totally fine because this stuff is going to stay good in the refrigerator for two months. It's not very perishable at all. Or if you don't have either of those things and you want to make it by hand, chop the onion, garlic, and red bell pepper down into a really fine paste, put that in a bowl, combine it with the herbs and the vinegar and the mustard, then whisk in the oil, and you'll have something that is a little bit looser and less viscous, but still delicious and still better than any dressing you can buy from the store. I'm going to spin this for another 10 seconds or so until the mustard seeds and all of the aromatics are finally broken down. Then I'm going to grab 200 grams of neutral oil. I'm using peanut oil here, but canola would also be fine or avocado oil, and then I'm going to slowly stream that in with the immersion blender running to get it fully emulsified. I would not use olive oil for this, guys, because when you spin olive oil with a machine, it gets super, super bitter, and it's not very delicious at all, and when you go to put the dressing in the refrigerator, because olive oil has some saturated fat in it, it's going to solidify after a couple of hours. When you go to pull that dressing out of the refrigerator, it's actually going to break when it comes back up to room temperature, which is not what you want. After a minute or so of spinning here, you can see we've got a really beautiful emulsified vinaigrette. When I say emulsified vinaigrette, I mean that the immersion blender broke the oil in the tiny little droplets that's being held in suspension in the vinegar and the mustard and the pureed aromatics. This gives us a texture that is quite different and has a thicker viscosity than just a standard issue vinaigrette that's been shaken together, for example. I just love it because it sits on the pasta in such a better way than a standard broken vinaigrette. With those kind of vinaigrettes that aren't heavily emulsified like this, the oil tends to sit on the food, and then all of the vinegar and stuff sinks to the bottom, and you never really get a bite that's fully in balance. The top layer is a little bit too greasy, and the bottom layer is too tart, and it never really works. Now that the vinegar and oil are basically fused together, they're going to sit on the pasta in a way where you're getting the balance of fat and acidity in every bite. Now I'm just going to give it a little taste. Tastes sick as hell. Tastes exactly like Olive Garden. Extremely nostalgic. But I will say this. It's a little bit on the tart side, but that's by design. Because pasta's pretty bland, and it needs something sharp to make it taste interesting, and I just think it's way more cool to balance this acidity with cheese instead of oil. So I'm going to be putting an ungodly amount of Parmesan cheese in this salad in a second here to balance the last little bit of acidity. Once my water's up to a boil here, I'm going to add in somewhere between 225 and 235 grams of rotini, or a few psylli would also work. Once that's stirred in, I'm going to bring this pot back up to a rapid boil. Then I'm going to cook this pasta 25% longer than package instructions. So for this rotini, the package would say cook it for seven to eight minutes. I'm going to cook mine for about 11 to 11 and a half. Why am I doing that? Well, you got to keep in mind, pasta salad is going to be served out of the refrigerator. In that process of getting cooled down, the starch is going to set and firm up and make a pasta that is quite toothsome. So if it was cooked to al dente, where it's perfect temperature at room temperature, by the time it cools down, it's going to be very firm, very unpleasant, and just not very good. So we're going to overcompensate by basically overcooking the pasta so that it is way too tender at room temperature, so that by the time it cools down and that starch sets, it's actually the perfect texture when it's cold. After about 11 and a half minutes, I'm just going to come back and taste the noodle real quick to make sure it's nice and soft, and it is. This is way past al dente. So I'm going to kill the heat, then bring this pasta over to the sink, then I'll drain it off, flip it into a stainless steel bowl, and bring it back over. Notice, I did not spray it with cool water, just because in some contexts, you really do want to cool down the noodle to stop the cooking as quickly as possible, but this noodle is already hammered. It's going to stay hammered. We're not trying to preserve texture or anything like that. And also, if you were to add cold water to this, it would make it taste kind of waterlogged and it would just dilute the final salad. The last step here before I move on is to add 25 grams of white distilled vinegar and a nice squirt of oil so that things don't stick together. Don't go too crazy here. Then I'm just going to jump in and very gently fold this to get the vinegar and oil mixed together. Now, the vinegar here plays pretty much the exact same role that rice vinegar would play in sushi rice. It's not here to make things taste sour or anything like that. It's really just there to make the starch taste more seasoned, more balanced, and more delicious. It's a very subtle move, but it's also a pro move that makes the final pasta salad just that much more soigné. Real quick, I just want to take a second to thank Commetteer for sponsoring this vid. 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To make it, I just combined the milk and ice first and then streamed in a thawed capsule. Like I said, this coffee is 10x the normal strength, so the flavor is really punched through the milk, and you get something that tastes like it was brewed by some award-winning barista named Zane or Finn or something like this. Like, you know, somebody who has very strong opinions about natural-processed coffee. Ooh, man. But this is what I like about Commetteer. The coffee tastes serious, but I don't have to take it too seriously or really know anything about making great coffee. If you want to try Commetteer and drink some of the best-tasting coffee you can possibly make at home, right now you can get $20 off your first box by going over to commetteer.com slash Brian Lagerstrom. The link is in my description. Thank you. Commetteer. Once my pasta's cooked, I'm just going to set this off to the side to cool down to roughly room temperature, and then I'm going to take about five minutes to do a little bit of knife work. To do that, I'll start with ... Ooh, that's a little juicy. A hundred grams of Kalamata olives, and then I'm going to come back and just cut them into two or three pieces. I like Kalamatas for this because they have this almost excessive saltiness that I think is really fun. It, like, buzzes your tongue in a way that really lets you know that they're there. And they have something that is akin to acidity. I can't really say it's the same thing. They're kind of tart. They're just really intense, and they almost hurt your tongue, and I like that. If Kalamatas are not your thing, which I totally get, you could sub in a more mild, buttery olive, like a Castelvetrano. Those are very good, and they're not as biting. Also, I'm cutting pretty much everything in this salad down because I want to get a bunch of stuff in one forkful. I don't really like a pasta salad that's too chunky because then you get two little noodles in one bite, and then a whole olive in another bite, and it's just too heterogeneous. I want something that's a little bit more unified. Okay, once I've got a hundred grams of Kalamatas chopped down, I'm going to set those aside. Next, I'm going to take about a half of a bell pepper and chop that down into a medium small dice. This is going to bring some really nice sweetness to the salad, but also some raw, fresh, juicy crunch that's really, really pleasant. In total, I need about 60 to 75 grams of diced bell pepper. Then I'm going to take some pepperoncinis from the jar and run my knife through a couple of times. Again, to break them down just so that they incorporate with the noodles and everything a bit better. They can be kind of chunky out of the container, and I don't want to eat a giant piece of pepperoncini. In total, I need about 50 grams of pepperoncinis, but you can go higher if you want it to be a little bit spicier. Next, I'm going to take about 100 to 115 grams of standard issue Genoa salami and cut that down into ribbons or medium dice. You just want a smaller piece that's going to incorporate with the pasta. Also, if you don't like salami, pepperoni would be a good sub here, capicola, any kind of salty cured pork would work totally fine. Also, once the salami is cut, I think it's nice to come back and fluff it apart a little bit. Just because of the way it gets laid out in the package, the slices can get kind of stuck together. Make sure that you're buying thin sliced salami too. I've seen stuff at the store that can be as thick as an eighth of an inch, which is absurd. That's going to be tough, and it's going to make the whole thing taste like salami. Next, I'm going to take a nice firm ball of cow's milk mozzarella, and I'm going to cut that down into medium to small dice. I like this because it's pretty mild and sweet and milky, and it's going to bring just clean fat to the salad that has a really nice soft texture. There's actually, aside from the pasta, there's not a lot of soft textures in here, so I just think this is one more nice, fluffy thing to bite into. Also, I just really want to clarify this. Don't use fresh buffalo milk mozzarella, like the stuff that we used for the Neapolitan pizza a couple weeks ago. It's really beautiful and milky and sweet, but it's way too soft, and when we go to toss it with the pasta, it's going to get all torn up, and it's going to make the pasta kind of snotty and gross, so I would skip it. In total, I need about 100 grams of chopped mozzarella. Now, the last little bit of knife work here is going to be to chop down some sun-dried tomatoes. I just want to clarify, you guys, that there are two main types, the dried raisiny ones that you're going to find in a bag, usually by the canned tomatoes, and then the oil-packed ones that are a little bit moister. That's what I have here, and in my opinion, it's a much superior, much more usable product. These are just sweeter. They taste a lot more like tomatoes, and the texture is nice. It's kind of got this squishy, roasty quality to it. The raisiny ones can be turned into these oil-packed ones by soaking them in hot water for about three hours, then draining off that water, and then packing them in oil. Once they're packed, they can stay good in the refrigerator for a couple months, and texturally and flavorally, they'll be very close to these. You can just tell are quite a bit more juicy, and they're going to be good to eat on their own. If you take a bite of one of those raisiny tomatoes, you're probably going to regret it. It's not very good. In total, I need about 100 grams of chopped, oil-packed, sun-dried tomatoes. Okay, once we've got our knife work done and our pasta cooled down to room temperature, it's time to combine everything. First thing in is going to be my chopped, sun-dried tomatoes. Again, that's 100 grams worth, then 100 grams of my milky, fresh mozzarella, 100 grams of chopped Kalamata olives, 65 to 75 grams of chopped red bell pepper, 50 grams of pepper and chin dogs, 100 grams of my chopped salami, then I'm going to grab some nice-tasting Parmesan cheese. Now, this is a detail that is important to me, but it might not be important to everybody, but I want to explain. This is the 18-month-age stuff that's been very coarsely grated into a gravelly texture. This is my go-to Parmesan, not only because it tastes good, but also because it stays differentiated. These little pebbly pieces fall into all the little crags in the pasta. They bind to stuff. For me, it's just way better than the powdery, Bel Gaioso-style domestic Parmesan that you can get at most supermarkets. That being said, that stuff is totally fine in a pinch. I just don't love it. It's not my 10 of 10 parm, because when it hydrates with the vinaigrette here, it can get a little bit pasty, and it just melts into the background. So 75 grams of nice-tasting aged Parmesan going in, then I'm going to take the vinaigrette that we spun up earlier, and I'm going to add in 150 grams worth, roughly, which is about half of what we made. I like to make a little bit extra here, just because it's nice to have. You can throw this on your lunch salad tomorrow, or as this pasta salad sits, a lot of the dressing is going to get absorbed. So it'll be nice to have a little bit extra when you serve it later on to kind of moisten things back up. So from here, once the dressing is in, I'm going to very gently fold this together. This spoon is not the right tool. I want to switch over to a nice spatula. That's going to allow me to get this nice, gentle fold. Since we cooked the pasta until it was super tender, it's a little bit fragile in the bowl at this point. You don't want to over-toss it and tear it up. So just gentle fold-overs like this. I'm going to wait until everything is evenly combined until I decide whether or not I want to add more dressing. You can always add extra. You can't take it away. And you don't want to make a pasta salad that's too soggy. Or also, if there's way too much vinaigrette, it's going to be a little bit out of balance and taste a little bit sour. And that's it. Once it's folded together, I mean, guys, look at this. Your brain just knows that this is right. The chunkiness of it, the moisture of the noodles, all the colors here, it all just adds up to the subconscious impression that this is going to be delicious and I want to eat it as soon as possible. So I'm just going to taste the noodles now to make sure that they're seasoned properly and see if we need to add any more dressing. Mm. Man. Oh, my gosh. First of all, the texture of the pasta is so perfect. It is overcooked, but in the best way possible. It's just squishy. And when you combine that with the chew from the salami and you get a little bit of crunch from the bell peppers, it's just like a very dynamic bite that also just gives you the impression of an Italian restaurant in the 90s. When I bite this, I'm instantly transported back to Olive Garden or something like that. It's my birthday. There's breadsticks on the table. I can smell it. And just the dried herbs and everything, I'm there. I am there. This makes me feel like a happy boy. I don't know what it is. There's something special here. It's one of the best sides you can make, but it also eats like an entree. You could easily sit down for girl dinner on the couch and watch The Sopranos while noshing on some pasta salad. Also, I didn't mention this, but this makes about eight portions. But if people taste it, they're probably going to want to eat a lot of it. So that probably becomes like five or six. This is very easily scaled up. There's nothing about this that is special. You could easily make a two or three times batch. And honestly, you probably want to, because it's going to stay good in the refrigerator for three or four days, and you're going to want to come back to it. This is my masterpiece. I really am so happy with this. I really hope you guys make it. And if you want to, as always, short version in the description beneath this video, long version will be linked on my blog, BrianLagersham.com. And as always, guys, thank you so much for your time and attention. Thank you for sticking around to the end of the video, and I'll see you next time.