Lemony Pasta Salad

Overview Video Ingredients Instructions Optional Tips Variations

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Lemony Pasta Salad

Cold lemon herb pasta salad with artichokes, olives, and fresh basil.

Difficulty: Easy — This is assembly cooking: rinse and drain, chop, whisk, toss. No heat required beyond cooking the quinoa.

Prep Time: 25 minutes

Cook Time: N/A

Total Time: 1 hour (including cooling and chilling)

Difficulty:

Easy

Serves:

Yield:

N/A

Overview

Fresh juice and zest from Wonderful® Seedless Lemons go straight into the vinaigrette. No seeds, no straining, just bright citrus flavor that holds up through the whole bowl. This is a pasta salad worth making the day before.

Ingredients

Pasta salad:

1 lb. tri-color fusilli pasta, cooked, drained, and cooled
2 Persian mini cucumbers, thinly sliced
¾ cup cherry tomatoes, quartered
½ cup canned chickpeas, drained and rinsed
¼ cup finely chopped yellow bell pepper
¼ cup red onion, thinly sliced
½ tablespoon zest from 1 Wonderful Seedless Lemon

Lemon vinaigrette:

¼ cup Wonderful Seedless Lemon juice
½ cup extra-virgin olive oil
1 teaspoon salt
¼ teaspoon red pepper flakes

Instructions

In a large bowl, combine the pasta, cucumbers, tomatoes, chickpeas, yellow pepper, onion, and lemon zest.
For the lemon vinaigrette: Combine the lemon juice, olive oil, salt, and red pepper flakes in a mason jar; shake or whisk well to combine.
Toss the pasta salad with the lemon vinaigrette. Garnish it with the lemon wedges and lemon zest.

Optional Tips

Dress the pasta while it is still warm. Warm pasta is porous at its surface. The lemon-oil emulsion absorbs directly into the pasta rather than sitting on top of it. Cold pasta has a sealed surface that repels dressing. If your pasta has already cooled, toss it with a splash of hot pasta water to open the surface slightly before adding the vinaigrette.
Cook the pasta al dente, not fully soft. Cold pasta salad continues to soften as it absorbs dressing. Pasta cooked to fully tender when drained will be noticeably mushy by the time the salad is served. Pull it one minute earlier than the package's suggested time.
Re-dress the salad before serving, every time. Pasta absorbs dressing continuously as it sits. A pasta salad that looked perfectly dressed going into the fridge will look and taste dry the next morning. Always hold back at least one-third of the dressing to add just before serving.
Reserve pasta water and use it. Starchy pasta water blends invisibly into the salad without diluting flavor the way plain water does. If the salad looks thick or clumped after refrigeration, add the reserved pasta water a tablespoon at a time until the texture loosens.
Use both lemon juice and lemon zest. Lemon juice provides acidity and tartness, but the aromatic compounds that produce the characteristic citrus fragrance live in the zest. A vinaigrette made with juice alone tastes acidic; one made with both tastes lemony.
Make the salad up to one day ahead, but hold the fresh herbs and cheese until serving. The pasta, dressing, artichokes, olives, sun-dried tomatoes, and cucumber can be combined and refrigerated overnight. Fresh basil, parsley, and shaved Parmesan should be added within an hour of serving.
Finish with a fresh squeeze of seedless lemon at the table. Lemon flavor is volatile. The simplest way to revive a pasta salad that has sat in the refrigerator is to squeeze half a seedless lemon directly over the bowl right before serving and toss once.

Variations

Greek Lemon Pasta Salad. Swap the Parmesan for crumbled feta and add ½ cup sliced roasted red peppers and ¼ cup thinly sliced red onion. Omit the sun-dried tomatoes if you prefer a cleaner Greek flavor profile.
Lemon Pasta Salad With Tuna. Add one can (5 oz.) of oil-packed tuna, drained and gently flaked into large chunks, at step four. Oil-packed tuna has a richer, less metallic flavor than water-packed and holds together better.
Lemon Pasta Salad With Chicken. Add two cups of shredded rotisserie chicken at step four. Season the chicken lightly with salt and a squeeze of fresh seedless lemon before adding.
Vegan Lemon Pasta Salad. Omit the Parmesan and mozzarella entirely. Add one can (15 oz.) of chickpeas, drained and rinsed, and increase the Kalamata olives to ¾ cup.
Spring Lemon Pasta Salad. Replace the artichoke hearts, sun-dried tomatoes, and olives with blanched asparagus cut into one-inch pieces, ½ cup fresh or thawed frozen peas, and six thinly sliced radishes.

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