Pasta Salad You’ll Actually Want to Eat

Today I'm going to show you how to make an incredible pasta salad at home. Perfectly cooked pasta gets tossed in an unbelievable roasted red pepper sauce, lots of fresh herbs, and a crispy, zesty topping. Your standard pasta salad is, how shall I say this, basic. It's just pasta, raw vegetables, and a vinaigrette-style dressing. There's nothing wrong with it, but it's also nothing special. I mean, think about it. Have you ever come home from a barbecue and told your spouse, man, your mom's pasta salad was so good. What was that, red wine vinaigrette? Gotta get that recipe. No, you haven't, because it's basic. So today we're going to give pasta salad the respect it deserves. The first thing we'll do is heat up the water for our pasta. We're cooking a pound of pasta, so you need a fair amount of water, about four quarts. While the water is heating up, we'll get started on our sauce. It's a loose interpretation of a romesco sauce, which is a rich, smoky Spanish sauce that's so good. Two of the main ingredients in this sauce are walnuts. We need a cup of those and some bread. A good quality bread, something from your local bakery or the bakery section of the grocery store. Sourdough, baguette, country bread. Adorable little boule like this if you have one. And you want to slice up about five ounces of the bread. We're going to toast both the bread slices and the walnuts on a sheet pan in the oven at 350 degrees Fahrenheit for about 10 minutes until the bread has dried out a bit and the walnuts are toasty and golden brown. And you'll flip both of those halfway through. We're going to take our toasted bread and break it up into smaller pieces. Put it in your food processor. We're going to make some breadcrumbs. The reason I'm breaking it up is because if you just added the big slices in there all at once, it would be hard for the motor to blend everything uniformly. Probably. We're going to use the pulse function to make breadcrumbs. You don't want to blend it continuously because you'll get a lot of fine crumbs and you'll lose some of that nice texture. And if your food processor is on the smaller side, you want to do this in two batches. All right, I'm going to show you what the breadcrumbs look like so you have an idea of what the texture should be. The breadcrumbs are going to make this pasta great in two different ways. First, we'll use half of the breadcrumbs in the sauce itself. It'll naturally thicken it up, kind of like a romesco traditionally would. The other half of the breadcrumbs, we will keep separate for the end for our crispy topping. Now that our bread is done, we're just going to add the rest of the ingredients to the food processor for the sauce. It's actually quite simple. So we're going to grab our toasted walnuts and the walnuts along with the breadcrumbs are going to thicken the sauce really nicely. I've got a couple of chopped garlic cloves, a teaspoon of red pepper flakes for a little heat, and of course some salt and pepper to season. Is anything coming up? I think I might need to loosen this later. There are three ingredients I want to highlight in the sauce before we finish it off. First, jarred roasted red bell peppers. These make the sauce so good. They add this velvety body and a subtle smoky sweetness. Would it be even better if you charred or broiled your own fresh bell peppers? Probably, but these are great, super convenient, and make the sauce very quick. Next up is smoked paprika. Romesco is typically smoky from the charred tomatoes and charred peppers. So this is going to add a nice pleasant smokiness without being overwhelming. If you're a little cautious about the smoky flavor profile, you could start slowly with a quarter teaspoon, taste and add more, but I really like it with a full teaspoon. The third ingredient I want to highlight is lemon, but first we're going to zest it, set that aside for the topping, and we're going to add just the juice to the sauce. It's going to cut through some of the richness from the walnuts and the olive oil, as well as brighten everything up. We're going to blend everything up in the food processor until it turns into a thick paste. They'll stream in the extra virgin olive oil with the motor running until you get a sauce that's relatively smooth and really nice and thick. Time for a taste. It's so good. It's got this really nice body, very voluptuous, luxurious body from the walnuts and the breadcrumbs, this nice mouthfeel from the olive oil, this like smoky sweet depth of flavor from the roasted bell peppers and the smoked paprika, and it would be really good just spread on toast. So if you want to do that, I will not hold that against you. And for the exact measurements, as well as step-by-step photos and tips and substitutions for this recipe, you can find all of that on my blog at rainboplantlife.com. I've linked it in the description box below this video. Our water is almost at a boil, so let's talk pasta real quick. You can use any short or medium-sized pasta that has some ridges, some nooks and crannies so the sauce can get in there. I'm using fusilli, but you could also do something like rotini or penne rigate. But before we add the pasta to the water, we have to first generously season the water with some kosher salt. Don't worry, it's not going to taste like a salty pasta. We're going to rinse off most of the salt at the end. Instead, it's going to infuse each bite of pasta with flavor so you have a well-seasoned but not salty pasta. When I'm making a hot pasta dish, I cook the pasta until it's just al dente so it doesn't overcook. But we're making a pasta salad and serving it chilled or at room temperature so it's a bit different because as pasta cools, it tends to harden. So if we were to cook it until it was just al dente for the pasta salad, it would be a little bit dry. So instead, we're going to cook it a couple minutes after the package time says it'll be done and we'll end up with pasta that is moist and soft. All right, enough pasta talk. While the pasta is cooking, we're going to make our topping. So get those breadcrumbs that we reserved from earlier and the lemon zest we also made. Or we didn't make it. We just zested it. You can't make lemon zest. Anyways, add your lemon zest. And for a lot of freshness, we're going to chop up a good amount of basil and flat-leaf parsley. We're using a pound of pasta, so we want to make sure we're using a lot of herbs so that we have lots of fresh, bright flavor. You can kind of think of this topping as a hybrid between gremolata and a breadcrumb topping. It's fresh, it's fun, and it's going to make the pasta even better. And for the parsley, you want to get rid of any thick stems at the bottom. This can be a little bitter depending on the bunch you have and just use the leaves and tender stems. Now for some bright, zippy, tangy flavor, we're going to add some capers. We're going to do three tablespoons, but first we'll drain them. And if you don't have capers or if you have olives at home instead, you could use green olives. And we'll just give these capers a chop. As an aside, a little cooking tip, don't throw away the brine that the capers come in. It's really great in sauces, dressings, marinades, anytime you want something tangy and sharp. Finally, just a little more red pepper flakes. I promise it's not going to be spicy. And some flaky sea salt. It's time to drain the pasta, but before you do, make sure to scoop out about a cup of the pasta water for the sauce. We're going to rinse it under cool water. This helps keep the pasta separate instead of clumping together. And it also brings the pasta to room temperature quickly. Before we assemble everything though, let's talk mix-ins. I like to add some greens for a little nutrition boost. I've got, I don't know, three big handfuls of arugula. You could also use baby spinach. I don't like big pieces in my pasta, so I'm going to chop it up. Another mix-in option, I had one leftover bell pepper from that jar. The sauce only needs a 12 ounce jar. Mine was 16 ounces. So I'm going to finely chop this up. It's going to be really nice in the pasta salad. I'll add it with the arugula. If you have some really good in-season summer tomatoes, you could finely chop those and add them in here. If you want to add a protein source, some canned white beans would also be a good option. It's time to mix everything together. Oops, little snack. Get all of it. Since our sauce is quite thick, we're going to add some of the pasta water to help the sauce cling to the pasta. I'm going to start with a half cup, toss it, and then we'll add more if needed. Yeah, we definitely want some more pasta water. So let's get that in there. Ooh, can you hear it? Right before serving, you'll add the topping. It's time to eat. Yes. The sauce is so amazing and flavorful. It's creamy, it's indulgent, but it doesn't feel heavy. Definitely perfect for summer and definitely not your typical pasta salad in the best way possible. If you're in the mood for even more salads that aren't really salads, I've got a short playlist for you right here. Thanks for watching. Bye.