Lemon Parmesan Pasta Salad
Lemon Parmesan Pasta Salad. A basic recipe to build on! Make any number of delicious ingredients come to life with a Creamy Lemon Parmesan Salad Dressing.
This recipe is by request from Rock Recipes followers who loved our recipe for Creamy Lemon Parmesan Salad Dressing. That recipe suggested using the dressing in a pasta salad recipe.
The photo showed the pasta salad that that we served at another BBQ dinner for our extended family. It was a great smoked BBQ meal that everyone loved to the last morsel!
The meal also included some of our delicious Brown Sugar Skillet Cornbread. That's become a must-serve at our BBQ meals. We fear revolt if it doesn't show up on the table.
The inspiration for Lemon Parmesan Pasta Salad.
Some beautiful fresh spring asparagus was available that week, so we decided to incorporate it into a very uncomplicated pasta salad. Some hothouse grown cherry tomatoes were also available, and we decided to use just those two perfect ingredients in the salad.
That was the basic form of this salad. Because those two ingredients were at their seasonal best, we let them shine. But the recipe is really just the a base to build on.
In the recipe below, we add plenty of suggestions to be added in any combination you like. The only consideration I would make in choosing ingredients is to keep them in the realm of Italian/Mediterranean food.
Since I love bacon in almost any pasta salad, and ham is traditional in a lot of pasta salads, perhaps some Italian charcuterie choices might be nice additions as well.
Let your imagination personal preferences be your guide. You can't really go wrong with a dressing that will pull it all together beautifully.
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Lemon Parmesan Pasta Salad
Ingredients
For the basic pasta salad
- ½ lb uncooked pasta, your choice. We used penne.
- 1 cup chopped cherry tomatoes
- 1 cup chopped, lightly steamed asparagus.
- 1 cup Creamy Lemon Parmesan Dressing (LINK TO RECIPE IN NOTES BELOW.)
- ¼ teaspoon black pepper
Delicious additions, as many as you like.
- Thinly sliced red onions
- Chopped black olives.
- Diced red pepper.
- Chopped capers
- Chopped pickled Pepperoncinis
- Sliced zucchini
- Sliced cucumber
- Chile flakes or finely diced red chiles for s spicy version
- Finely sliced fresh fennel
- Chopped thinly sliced prosciutto
- Chopped Thinly sliced capicola ham
- Diced dry salami
- Anything else you think would work!
Nutrition Information
Yield
12Serving Size
1Amount Per Serving Calories 150Total Fat 12gSaturated Fat 2gUnsaturated Fat 11gCholesterol 8mgSodium 252mgCarbohydrates 8gFiber 1gSugar 2gProtein 2g
The nutritional information provided is automatically calculated by third party software and is meant as a guideline only. Exact accuracy is not guaranteed. For recipes where all ingredients may not be used entirely, such as those with coatings on meats, or with sauces or dressings for example, calorie & nutritional values per serving will likely be somewhat lower than indicated.
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