The Seasoning Mistake You're Making With Pasta Salad

Pasta salad is popular year-round for several reasons, one of which is that it is relatively simple to prepare. All you have to do is boil noodles, create a dressing, add a few goodies to the mix, and you're done. However, sometimes folks make a crucial mistake during this simple process and create an unfortunate dish nobody wants to touch.

Most don't have any problem getting the right amount of water to boil the pasta and the starch comes out fine. The dressing, on the other hand, is where many go wrong. It's easy to think big and start tossing various seasonings into the mix without accounting for how they will harmonize and make a cohesive dish. When this happens, you can all too easily end up with over-salted, overly spicy, or excessively acidic pasta salad — in the most unfortunate situation, you may sometimes get all of the above.

Adding too much seasoning is one of the most common mistakes you can make when crafting pasta salad. Even worse, once it's done, you can't take it back. The error becomes apparent with the first taste ... in fact, this is likely why things went awry in the first place. While making the dressing, you need to taste as you go. You can practically never taste test a dish too often when cooking, but if you don't taste enough, even small missteps can accumulate to something that is off-putting at best and inedible at worst.

While testing your dressing, consider the flavors you are trying to present in the dish. If you're going for a spicy pasta salad, double-check the heat so it is not overwhelming. Attempting to go the citrusy route? Taste it often to ensure the acidity isn't going to make somebody pucker up after a bite.

Of course, mistakes happen. When they do, there is usually a solution to correct the situation, even if you've overseasoned your pasta salad. While you can't rinse away the flavoring like you might when you overseason meat or veggies, you can mute the flavor somewhat. It largely depends on your base for the dressing.

If the pasta salad is mayo-based, supplement with more mayo. It's the same concept with other ingredients, but be warned: this action should only be taken as a last resort. Adding more base to the blend will very likely change the texture of the dish, potentially making it watery or soggy. But if you do it right, your mistake will be corrected (you may still be forced to toss out unused dressing). The best option is to add seasoning in small amounts and taste as you go to make sure your pasta salad comes out just the way you want it to.