The Unique Ingredient You Should Be Caramelizing For Pasta Salad

One of the classic mistakes everyone makes when cooking pasta salad is not seasoning the dish adequately. Cooked pasta is, by itself, relatively starchy and flavorless. It needs a strong base of bold flavors to pop and turn it into a scrumptious side or main. While overseasoning pasta salad is not something you want to do, skimping on your flavor is objectively the bigger culinary sin.

Enter Foodie's pal Dan Pelosi, also known by the moniker GrossyPelosi. He's a cookbook author who partnered with McCain to create the innovative ReGen fries and promote sustainable farming. Furthermore, he's a little bit of a maverick when it comes to flavor. When we asked him about unexpected and fun twists on pasta salad, he was armed with the answer. "I have a pasta salad that has caramelized lemons in it," he announced, as if that was anything we were expecting. 

Caramelized lemons? One look at his Piccata Pasta Salad and, as the song goes, we're a believer. You've heard of caramelizing onion, but it turns out that caramelized lemon is the flavor punch you didn't know that you were missing. Whether you copy Pelosi's piccata or riff on a citrus-based pasta salad of your own, a bit of golden lemon is about to rock your world.

With Pelosi's instructions, caramelizing lemon couldn't be more foolproof. "You have to thinly slice [the lemon] because people are very averse to eating the pith. I do a full slice, and then I put a little oil, and then I caramelize it on both sides," he instructs. It takes about 10-12 minutes to get the job done by cooking the slices in a medium-hot pan with some olive oil. Stir regularly to make sure that your lemons don't stick to the pan, and watch for any signs that they are getting burned or otherwise overdone.

We're a little obsessed with the pasta-bilities for caramelized lemon in our favorite summer side dish. How about some capers and basil for an alternative Italian profile? The best pasta salad uses the right noodles for the job and here we're thinking some orecchiette would shine bright. Or consider an herbaceous take with cold rotisserie chicken, fresh grated parm, and tons of herbs cut in a chiffonade over bow ties. We're also dreaming about piling artichoke hearts and pine nuts atop fusilli. All of these beg for plenty of lemon juice, but the addition of caramelized lemon would brighten them up, bring new complexity, and take many a dish to the next level. So, don't be afraid to get zesty ... take Pelosi's idea and run with it!