The Best Pasta Salad

“This was a great salad! I couldn’t find any decent tomatoes, so I stuck w/the red and green bell peppers, and a red onion…also added chunks of cucumber, and whole olives since I wasn’t sure if everyone liked olives (easier to pick out than sliced). I couldn’t find the sun dried tomato dressing, so I used a reduced calorie Italian dressing. Thanks!”

“When I read this had sun-dried tomato salad dressing in it I knew I had to try it, because thats one of my favorite dressings. It was a wonderful tasting full of flavor salad! I did add a little feta cheese to it, but kept everything else the same. Thanks Bethany.”

“Wonderful! Much better than the same old Pasta Salad. So simple too! Perfect with any BBQ food.”

“This was a good “base” recipe. I see pasta salad as an opportunity to improvise using your own leftovers and ingredients on hand. In addition to this recipes’s ingredients I also added: artichoke hearts, sliced zucchini, sun dried tomatoes, and red onion instead of white. You could also use pepperoni, kalamata olives, cooked eggplant, steamed broccoli, feta cheese, etc. I had a huge Costco bottle of Tuscan Style Italian dressing which I used. It came out great! I think you’d have to work pretty hard to ruin a pasta salad like this (maybe if you overcooked the pasta!). Thanks for posting!”

“So good and so easy!Goes great at potlucks!We like it with grilled chicken, feta cheese, red onion, and ham/salami/or pepperoni.I use lite Italian dressing.I’ve tried various kinds of Italian dressings and they have all gotten rave reviews.”

“I made this fro company last night.it was great and well-received.The only thing I did not include was the green pepper, because unfortunately I did not have one available and I did not have time to drive to the store.”

“I take this salad everywhere I go for potlucks, especially in the summer months.It’s always a huge hit!Our favorite combo is cucumbers, peppers, red onion, olives, feta cheese, and pepperoni with a greek dressing…but it is fabulous as written too.”

“I have made this several times and it is a great hit. I could not find the sun dried tomato salad dressing and used newman’s parmesan instead. I have some who do not like tomatoes so I used cucumbers instead. It is a versatile recipe which can easily be adapted to your tastes!”

“I wanted to bring something quick and easy to our 4th of July cookout and I came across this recipe. This recipe was excellent. I used Wishbone House Italian (because I didn’t have sun-dried tomato) dressing, added a cucumber, used cherry tomatoes instead of a whole tomato, and added a little italian seasoning and it was GREAT.”

“This was very good. Definitely an easy and delicious side dish.”

“What an easy and light summer pasta salad!I didn’t have black olives, and had to substitute a different dressing, a balsamic vinaigrette, but it was still delicious.This is one recipe where you can easily add and subtract different veggies and it will work.Thanks for sharing this winner.”

“Doubled this recipe and took to a barbecue. Only change I made was to use a variety of green, red, orange, and yellow peppers for additonal color. Easy, quick to fix, and everyone enjoyed it. Made this in the morning, tossed it all together, and didn’t need to rewet with additional dressing. Thanks for sharing the recipe!”

“This recipe is so amazing! I did it for the 4th weekend Barbeque. and it was gone in what seemed like 60 seconds! This is now a staple for cookouts and potlucks! Thank You!”

“Great recipe. I did omit the capers (personal choice). I was able to find the sun dried tomato dressing (randall’s carries it). Thanks for posting!”

“This recipe was great, hoever I could not find the correct dressing (seems like a common problem). An excellent way to solve this, I always have sun-dried tomatoes in the fridge, so I used the oil straight out of the jar to dress the salad. Really gave it a kick!! Thanks for posting :)”

“Old Review:06-29-2005 This was not bad considering I was missing some key ingredients at the time (including the correct salad dressing =/ ).Hopefully one day I can find a market that actually stocks that kind of Kraft dressing.New Review:I finally remade this, only 5 years later… =PI used Kraft Roasted Red Pepper salad dressing without any onions. It came out really good! Thank you so much!”

“This was a good, light pasta salad.I did add a chopped cucumber because we like those in our salads and I did not use olives since I didn’t have any.This does make quite a bit.A good alternative to the mayo based salads.Thanks.”

“I added Lots of extra veggies. Thanks it is wonderful”

“love it.My husband hates (used to!) pasta salad, but sometimes I crave it. Made this one, and I couldn’t get him to stop eating it. Very good, thank you for sharing!I just made this again for dinner tonight, but instead I used the Kraft roasted red pepper dressing (completely accidental), and it is really good too.”

“This was one of the better pasta salads I’ve had. We threw some steamed broccoli, green onions, and feta into ours.”