The Dressing Mistake You're Making When Preparing Pasta Salad

Unlike revenge, pasta is great served warm or cold, and pasta salad is the delicious proof of the main ingredient's versatility. There are many directions one can go for pasta salad, but they all tend to consist of cooked and cooled pasta, chopped vegetables and/or legumes, and dressing. The dish is tasty, refreshing, and — perhaps most appealingly — easy to prepare at home. It's even a great way to use up the surplus from a previous night's main course. You can follow a tried-and-true recipe, like this summer BLT pasta salad, or, with your favorite pasta shape, vegetables, and mix-ins, you can customize your dream pasta salad with little to no difficulty. 

Despite being a relatively easy meal to prepare, it is important to be aware of the mistakes everyone makes when making pasta salad. Specifically, when making pasta salad you must mind the timing of adding your dressing. Since you must cook the pasta before incorporating it into the mix, you must also make sure it cools off completely before you combine it with your dressing.

As with any salad, the dressing is an essential component — it adds flavor, makes the ingredients more palatable, and ties the whole dish together. The key role that dressing plays makes it especially important to add the dressing correctly. Not only does that mean adding an adequate amount but also adding it at the right time. When confronted with the heat from cooked pasta, some dressings may separate (specifically, those with oil and vinegar –which really covers lion's share of them), and this will disrupt the dressing's smooth consistency and refreshing, tangy taste. 

There is a right way to warm salad dressing, and mixing it with hot pasta is not recommended. Adding the dressing to cooled pasta helps ensure that the dressing components stay intact. Timing the dressing correctly is both a straightforward and crucial way to guarantee a quality pasta salad.