Simple & Easy Pasta Salad with a 3-ingredient dressing!

This pasta salad is made with Ditalini pasta, tons of fresh veggies, and a simple 3-ingredient dressing. I threw some shrimp in for good measure and each bite is so flavorful and complimentary textures. This will be your new go-to pasta salad! 👇👇👇 CLICK FOR RECIPE & DETAILS 👇👇👇

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today I’m going to share my tips and tricks for making the perfect pasta salad and let me tell you this didini pasta salad is going to be your new go-to welcome to the salted pepper where we cook for real life using real food and we keep it real simple today’s recipe is pasta salad there are so many different variations of pasta salad I am sure you’ve made several different kinds so have I but this one is the absolute best I’ve ever had and I think it is is largely due to the type of pasta and all the other ingredients that just pair perfectly with it and then it’s dressed with a really simple type of a pasta salad dressing three ingredients all you need for the dressing it’s absolutely delicious the first thing you want to do is get your pasta cooked so to do that fill a pot with water and get it boiling on the stove how much water you use is dependent on the size of the pot I’m using kind of a skillet so it’s a lower profile has a color that goes right in there makes it super easy to drain the pasta but whatever you want to set up on your stove to boil the pasta is perfectly fine so bring the water to a boil and then we’re going to Salt it that’s very important now how much salt you add depends on how much water and how much pasta you’re cooking at once so I have 12 cups of water 8 oz of pasta I’m going to use a half of a tablespoon of a kosher salt you could use sea salt as well so sprinkle that in and then just give it a little stir then make sure it comes back to a rolling boil before you add in your pasta so the pasta in this recipe is the key it is called didini pasta it’s got a little hole in it it’s a small pasta and it makes this pasta salad number one so easy to eat and all of the textures go together perfectly it’s absolutely the best pasta salad I’ve ever made I know you’re going to love it [Music] all right 8 oz of pasta for one uh recipe you can double it if you’d like and that is about 1 and 1/2 cups so give the pasta a stir so that it doesn’t stick but don’t add any oil that is very important a lot of times I know people will add oil to their pasta so that it doesn’t become starchy but guess what when you’re Bon pasta salad you want it a little starchy because we want that dressing to cling to the pasta that’s what’s going to flavor everything and help avoid a runny pasta salad where all the dressing just sort of slips off okay we want it to adhere to the pasta so we want some starch left on that pasta so the didini pasta takes about 10 minutes to boil but in 8 minutes we’re going to add in frozen shrimp because we want to get those cooked as well now the shrimp are optional in the recipe I use about a cup and a half which is 6 oz you can use them or omit them that’s totally up to you I’m using small shrimp that are 60 to 80 per pound and they are already peeled and deined and they come Frozen so I just add them in to the pasta 2 minutes before the pasta’s done and they cook perfectly while the pasta’s cooking let’s make up this really simple dressing you are going to love this it is only three ingredients super easy and it’s going to go on all kinds of different pastas salad so even if you don’t want to make the one I’m making although I think you should try this dressing out one cup of real mayonnaise now I have not tried this with Miracle Whip however if you like that extra Tang of a Miracle Whip you would probably be fine to substitute it in this recipe 1 and 1/2 tablespoons of white wine vinegar you could also use just plain white vinegar or you can use an apple cider vinegar that’s perfectly fine don’t use bomic vinegar though that will change the ENT ire look and flavor and then 3 tablespoons of white granulated sugar you can cut down on that if you want to but I found this to be a really nice balance between sweet and tangy from the vinegar and the sugar so just whisk this up and then we’re going to leave it to the side here you don’t need to refrigerate it right now because we’re going to add it some of it anyway to the warm pasta and that that is another tip that I have for making pasta salad and I’ll get into that in just a second because it is about time to add our [Applause] shrimp this is a really good size for this pasta salad because the shrimp are just little bit bigger than the other ingredients but because they’re cooked perfectly they just have this great texture and boost of flavor I absolutely love the shrimp in this pasta salad all right all right so the pasta cooked for 8 minutes we added the shrimp cooked in additional 2 minutes I just tasted one of the pasta they’re perfectly alente and we are ready to go so now just drain off all the extra water we want the pasta salad to be as dry as possible so you want to really take your time getting all of the water drained off all right then put it into a large mixing bowl and then if you like peas I love peas you’re going to add in one cup or about 6 oz of frozen peas don’t cook them first they’re already blanched they are going to thaw in the pasta salad while it’s warm and they just add such a nice sweet and a vibrant green color oh my gosh they’re amazing but if you don’t like peas omit them give the pasta salad a little stir okay now we’re going to add about 1/4 cup of the dressing that we made this is super important so many people let their pasta cool down before they dress it if they’re making pasta salad and you really shouldn’t do that you really should put part of the dressing on while the pasta is warm because it starts to absorb the dressing and it flavors the pasta so beautifully so definitely next time you’re making pasta salad put in about a quar of the dressing before you even refrigerate it okay stir that in you don’t want to put all of it in because the pasta will absorb almost all of it and then when you go to serve it you won’t have a creamy pasta salad so you only want to put in about a quar of it so in this instance it’s a/4 cup or so and we’ll mix that around then you want to refrigerate it cuz now we want to chill it before we add in any of our fresh frh vegetables and put the final bit of dressing on what I like to do is just pop it right in the refrigerator and I know before you say you shouldn’t put anything warm in the refrigerator we have frozen peas in here that cooled everything down so it is not really that warm anymore okay and we also put in some of the dressing it is perfectly fine to put it right in your refrigerator uncovered and that is important uncovered for at least the first 30 minutes because if you did cover it with Saran Wrap or foil there will be a little bit of steam that comes up and you’ll get condensation and that condensation will drip back down into your pasta salad and make it runny so uncovered for 30 minutes then you’re going to cover it with Saran Wrap and let it chill completely that’ll take about 2 hours or you can leave it overnight then we’ll get to prepping all the vegetables and get our pasta salad finished up once your pasta salad has chilled for at least 2 hours but again you go four even overnight if you wanted to and give it a little bit of a stir what I’m looking for is just to see is there a lot of liquid in here and there is not that is absolutely perfect that’s what we want if for some reason you did have a lot of liquid you may want to consider draining it so that you don’t end up with too liquidy of a pasta salad all right so I’m going to set this to the side now and Grate my carrot there’s a certain way that I like to grate the carrot so I wanted to show you that I use the large side of a box grater or it could be one that lays flat over the bowl which is actually my preference but I just don’t have one here and then I take the carrot I have peeled it and cut both ends off I don’t want long strips of carrot but I do want the burst of color that it gives and a little bit of texture so I go this way with it just kind of a little bit on the diagonal to make little shreds like that that’s what you want to say all right so I’m going to do that I’ll add between one and two carrots depending on the size I don’t really usually measure the carrots um but probably about a/4 of a cup is a good uh starting point so 1/4 cup shredded [Music] all right that looks good so that’s about a/4 of a cup that was one small carrot so I’m going to add that in I can always add more later and just look at the pop of color oh my gosh I love it I love it love it love it this didini pasta salad is so colorful it’s so delicious and I I it’s just perfect it’s absolutely perfect one cup of finely diced celery the the idea when you’re cutting all your vegetables up is to make them about the same size as the pasta we want everything in this pasta salad to be about the same size except the shrimp are a little bit larger all right so one cup it’s probably about a/4 in dice okay then we have a half of a cup of red bell pepper and a half of a cup of yellow bell pepper and I did the exact same thing with dicing it up about the same size so a/4 in dice now if you didn’t want to add the yellow you could add all red it’s perfectly fine now for the tomatoes I used Roma tomatoes because they are not quite as seedy or as juicy and I’m using the flush only you want about a cup of diced tomato that’s about A4 of an inch in size you can use any kind of tomatoes you want but try to get rid of as many seeds and liquid as you can or your pasta salad will end up too runny so one cup is what you want and then for the onion I like to use red onion but honestly you could use whatever kind of onion you want you want about a/4 cup of it same size [Music] dice all right so for the Cucumbers one cup of finely diced 1/4 inch cucumber you can use any kind of cucumbers you want I leave the skin on you can take the skin off that’s fine if you’re using an English cucumber you don’t usually have to remove the seeds and the wetter part in the center but if you’re using a regular cucumber you may want to do that and what I do is I will slice them and then slice that piece off so if I see a big area with a lot of seeds I know that’s going to be very juicy and it’s going to get our pasta salad too wet so I just slice that right off so one cup and then we’re going to put the rest of our dressing on you could do this in stages just in case you didn’t want to overdress it maybe you like less dressing on your pasta salad so that’s perfectly fine in fact that’s what I’ll do I’ll put in about half of it and then give it a nice stir this is so beautiful now when it comes to the vegetables you use honestly you pick and choose what you like you don’t have to include everything that I’ve included you could even change the dressing up a little bit if you wanted to make it more medit Anan with black olives and things like that but look at how gorgeous this is wow and I think we have enough carrot so I’m good with that amount then just as a final little garnish I like to add in some green onions just the green part though I use the white part for something else and save these little guys to put right into the salad so I’m just going to chop those up all right before I add these I’m going to add the rest of the dressing I happen to like a saucy pasta salad so I’m going to add all of it in but that is totally up to you this will stay good in fact it’s actually better the next day so put a cover on it and refrigerate it overnight but it will stay good in the refrigerator for at least 3 or 4 days it’s not one of those SAA salads that gets really liquidy it’s terrific now at this point if you were going to transfer it to a serving Bowl that’s what I would do right now and then put your green onions on top all right we’ll Pretend This is my serving Bowl because I don’t feel like transferring it and then just sprinkle the green onions over top cover it with some Saran rat pop it into the refrigerator and leave it refrigerated until you are going to serve it at your [Music] Gathering oh I’m super excited I love this pasta salad I know you will too all right let’s get a shrimp perfectly cooked M it adds such a nice flavor to this pasta salad I mean the shrimp is optional obviously but oh boy it is so good in here all right now let’s get the pasta with a little bit of everything else m my goodness this is perfect the dressing is so simple but it is perfectly balanced and it goes with all of these vegetables so well so it brings out the vegetable flavor uh it’s so so good the carrots are the perfect texture because you don’t really want something so crunchy as a Raw carrot in your pasta salad so grating them is is the way to go the pasta itself absolutely perfectly cooked and it’s flavorful everything about this is perfect this is the perfect pasta salad