Who doesn’t love pasta salad? Especially when it’s homemade and the dressing doesn’t contain seed oils!
My kids LOVE pasta salad, they could eat it for lunch everyday for a week. But only one week, every time I make it for a second week they won’t eat it…but we all know how that goes.
Anyway, recently I made this recipe and they both decided that this was the best pasta salad I’ve made…EVER! And since they are my best and harshest critics, I’ll take their word for it. These girls know their pasta salads. They have their favorite types of noodles, and certain ingredients they love. They’ll even eat if for breakfast if I let them.
I started making pasta salad from scratch when my daughter started eating real lunches. But I didn’t start making my own dressing for a while. But have you ever read the ingredients in 99% of the brands on the shelf at the store? They’re terrible. Full of seed oils, additives, sugars and even food dyes! So I finally gave up and decided I needed to start making my own dressings, for salads and pasta salads, and whatever else needs a delicious dressing.
I also love the versatility of this dressing. The base can remain the same, but you can get creative with the add-ons. If you don’t enjoy the flavor of dill you can substitute for almost any other dried herb. Want is a little more spicy? Add in some paprika and cayenne pepper, it’s delicious on egg salad!
As for the pasta salad, you can get as wild as you want with the ingredients. My kids enjoy simple and more traditional veggies, like tomatoes, cucumbers and olives. But you can add meats if you want, cubes of cheese, or whatever variety of vegetables you have extra of in your fridge.
It keeps well, so you can make it on Sunday night and pack it for lunch all week without it going bad. I recommend cooking your pasta to al dente though so that they don’t get soggy once you mix them with the dressing.
This is also a wonderful dish to take to a backyard BBQ in the summer, or a potluck. And I guarantee that people will be asking for your dressing recipe when they try this.
My Kid's Favorite Pasta Salad with Homemade Dressing (no seed oils)
Difficulty: Easy8
servings15
minutes10
minutes575
kcalDressing Ingredients
1/2 olive oil
1/2 cup mayonnaise ( I either make my own, or use Primal brand, because it has the cleanest ingredients of all the brands I've looked at)
1/4 cup stone ground mustard or dijon mustard
4 TBSP Balsamic Vinaigrette
Juice from 1 lemon
3 TBSP dried dill
1/4 tsp red pepper flakes
2 TBSP fresh chopped parsley, or dried parsley
Salt and pepper to taste
- Pasta Salad Ingredients
1 box of pasta, I prefer either spiral or elbow macaroni
1 cucumber, diced (cut in half, then cut into strips length wise, then cut across, creating a "diced" look)
2 cups (about 1 box) cherry tomatoes, quartered
1 can pitted black olives, chopped
1/2 red onion, diced *optional
Directions
- Coook pasta to al dente.
- In a jar or bowl mix all the ingredients for the salad dressing. I prefer to make it in a jar and then I simply shake the jar to combine everything together.
- Cut vegetables as desired, for the best texture I reccomend dicing the cucumber, quartering the tomatoes, chopping the olives and dicing the red onion, if you are using it.
- Once your pasta is cooked to al dente, drain pasta and let it cool fully. You can speed up the cooling process by spraying your pasta with cold water.
- In a large bowl combine pasta, vegetables and dressing. Mixing until just combined. Serve chilled, Enjoy!