Lasagna Noodles Are The Unexpected Base You Need To Try In Pasta Salad

Often reserved for warmer months as a staple of cookout dining sides, pasta salad is truly a great dish for just about any time of year. With a wide variety of just-can't-get-enough pasta salad recipes, there's something out there to please everyone, including those who are gluten free, don't eat meat, or have a dairy intolerance. Of the many tips you need to make the ultimate pasta salad, using the right noodles seems fairly obvious. If you've ever wondered what the right noodles are, however, you might be looking for starch in all the wrong places. Try breaking up sheets of lasagna noodles for your next pasta salad for an absolutely unforgettable combination of flavors and textures.

Lasagna noodles might not be the first choice that comes to mind when one thinks about pasta salad, but these large, wide sheets are in fact ideal for providing the optimal surface area to accommodate a bevy of sauces and toppings. Breaking up larger lasagna noodle sheets into "shards" gives an excellent boost to the texture of your pasta salad by bucking uniformity and giving more allowance for all of the ingredients in your pasta salad to shine. After all, what are lasagna noodles but a form of pasta that's made for layering? Consider that you can even make a cold style of casserole by using baked lasagna sheets layered and stacked with your favorite pasta salad fillings.

The best part about making a pasta salad using broken lasagna noodles is taking a twist on the way that pasta shapes traditionally form this dish. Whereas elbow macaroni or fusilli pasta are standard choices, utilizing the width of lasagna noodles varies the texture and contrast between the starchy noodle elements versus all of the amazing fillings that you include.

Take for example a Southwestern pasta salad recipe, which would ordinarily feature a tri-color rotini pasta. Replacing these noodles with larger pieces of lasagna noodles changes the entire game. There is so much more to work with when mixing up the beans, greens, and sauce as well as more opportunities for full pasta coverage in this salad. Further, a hearty zippy tuna pasta salad recipe will taste all the more delicious when you skip the fusilli and swap in swaths of lasagna noodles. 

It's important to be mindful of your pasta to sauce ratio to avoid overly soggy salads. You will also want to cook your lasagna noodles on the al dente side to maintain structural integrity. When it comes to assembling a pasta salad that doesn't include any actual pasta, try sheets of zucchini that you can prepare similarly to lasagna noodles and replicate the shape and size. Meat-free pasta salad options can also include plant-based ingredients or additional vegetables too.