How to make pasta salad - some tips

Rest assured, it's very easy. Pasta salads are among the easiest pasta recipes to prepare. You simply toss together three or four basic sets of ingredients:

1. Cooked pasta
2. "Salad type" vegetables / fruits - tomato, cherry tomato, cucumber, celery, carrot, lettuce, dried tomato, pickled olives, capers, etc, etc.
3. Optional meat (including preserved meats like sausage, salami, etc), seafood, beans or other high protein foods like tofu or tempeh
4. Salad dressing.

With these four "food groups" you will not only know how to make pasta salad, but how to make endless varieties of them:

• Vegetarian or meat-based pasta salads
• Pasta salads with mayonnaise, oil and vinegar, cheese, soy sauce, chilli sauce and other types of dressings
• Italian, Greek, Chinese, Japanese, Thai, Filipino and other styles!

But how to make pasta salad delicious and satisfying? Ah... this is where you might benefit from the trials, errors and experiences of people like me who love to experiment with different types of pasta and pasta salads.

So let me share with you some tips on how to make pasta salad successfully:

1. Go easy on the pasta salad dressing, especially the richer dressings like mayonnaise or cream cheese dressings. This was the first important lesson I learned. The first time I made a simple pasta salad recipe, I added too much mayonnaise. It's my fault that I did not follow the measurements given in recipes and added too much. I enjoyed a very rich-tasting pasta salad. But the after effects were not so enjoyable. I felt sick!
   
   
2. Cook the pasta al dente, or firm to the bite. This is important for all pasta dishes but especially for pasta salads. Many times, I had eaten pasta salads where, because the pasta was over-cooked, the entire pasta salad was a mush and a mess! When I finally learned how to make pasta salad properly, making sure the pasta is al dente, the dish became so much more enjoyable!
   
   Make sure also that you cook the pasta properly - in salted, rapidly boiling water, do not rinse the pasta after cooking, and so on.
   
   
3. Refrigerate your pasta after it has been cooked. The owner of an Italian deli shared with me this simple trick on how to make pasta salad more crunchy. After you have cooked and drained your pasta, add a bit of oil or the salad dressing (to prevent the pasta from sticking together) and leave it in the refrigerator for about half an hour. The purpose is not so much to cool the pasta, but more to stop the cooking process so that it remains al dente, and also to dry the pasta slightly so that it will not be soggy.
   
   
4. Dry your vegetables. No need to go to the extent of using a "salad dryer" that spins the vegetables to dry them. At least pat or shake them dry. Or, if they are sitting in a bowl with water at the bottom, lift them out and toss your salad in a dry bowl.
   
   
5. Use fresh, preferably organic, vegetables. Organic vegetables generally have stronger, more complex flavours as well as better texture - they are more firm and crunchy. They also have richer colours and will make your pasta salad more attractive. Do not use hydroponic / aeroponic vegetabes grown in water / air - they are watery and weak tasting. Also do not use old vegetables that have lost their crunch from sitting too long in the refrigerator. Save those for soup stocks.
   
   
6. Use the best quality ingredients - premium grade extra virgin olive oil, better brands of mayonnaise rather than the cheapest one from the supermarket, or, for Asian-style pasta salads, premium shoyu (soy sauce), rice vinegar, and so on.
   
   
7. Finally be creative. Use recipes for ideas and inspiration rather than for fixed forumlas. Click here for Part II of this article on how to make pasta salad, which includes an index to pasta salad recipes.

Note, also, that many traditional pasta recipes are, in fact, pasta salad recipes - for they merely involve tossing together pasta with raw or pre-cooked ingredients. Examples include the classic dish, Pasta pesto along with its variation, cilantro pesto. A less obvious example is my recipe for Salmon gremolata, where the pasta is tossed with a mixture of lemon, garlic, olive oil and basil (or, in my case, dill) and cooked salmon.

Among my creative, Asian-style fusion pasta recipes, the Filipino dish using itlog na maalat or salted eggs is also a pasta salad.