Garden Pasta Salad

This garden pasta salad is easy to make and comes together quickly. It's a cold pasta salad that's made with rotini, tomatoes, cucumbers and a light homemade oil and vinegar dressing.

Course Side Dish

Cuisine American

Keyword cold pasta salad

Prep Time 15 minutes

Cook Time 10 minutes

Total Time 25 minutes

Servings

Calories 306kcal

Author Elizabeth

Ingredients

12 ounces Tricolor Rotini Pasta cooked to package directions for al-dente
½ teaspoon Salt or to taste, plus 1 tablespoon for the pasta water (we use kosher salt)
¼ cup Extra Virgin Olive Oil
2 tablespoon Red Wine Vinegar
1 Garlic Clove grated or minced finely
¼ teaspoon Dried Oregano
¼ teaspoon Black Pepper or to taste
2 Large Tomatoes seeded and diced
1 Cucumber peeled, seeded, quartered and cut into slices

Instructions

Cook the tricolor rotini pasta to package directions for al-dente, remember to salt the water. When the pasta is done, drain and allow it to cool.
Cut the cucumber and the tomatoes into bite sized pieces. Refrigerate until ready to use.
Make the dressing - In a small jar, or a container with a tight fitting lid, add the extra virgin olive oil, red wine vinegar, grated garlic, dried oregano salt and black pepper. Cover the container and shake vigorously to mix.
Make the garden pasta salad - In a large bowl combine the pasta, tomatoes, cucumbers, and the dressing. Toss the pasta salad gently to combine the ingredients well.
Try the garden pasta salad, and add salt to taste, only if needed.
Refrigerate the pasta salad until ready to serve.

Notes

If you’re using a hothouse (or English) cucumber, peeling and seeding is not necessary. If using a garden cucumber, then you may want to remove most, or all of the peel. Also, slice the cucumber in half and gently remove the seeds with a spoon. Here, we use a hothouse cucumber so we left the peel mostly intact; we added a little interest by scoring it with a lemon zester (a fork, will work too).

Nutrition