To Dread Summer Pasta Salads?

[EggInANest]

IMO pasta 'salad' is revolting.

Pasta was surely not made to be eaten cold? It is stodgy, claggy, and invariably mixed up with mayo and sweetcorn to make it even more claggy and gunky and horrid.

I keep seeing it recommended for buffets and BBQs. Alongside Coleslaw and Potato salad, both of which are also creamy beige, mayo drenched and one very carby. Fine if you like these salads (I do like good coleslaw and good potato salad) but not all three together, surely? We need contrast and variety!

Does summer have to come with a side of pasta salad?

I have never eaten a pasta salad with mayo. Or sweetcorn. Either pesto, or vinaigrette.

My potato salad has a little mayo, but also mustard and capers. Not claggy at all. You could use a honey and mustard vinaigrette instead if you wanted to - the capers are the essential part.

It has mini marshmallows in it.

And some hellish synthetic gunk called Cool Whip.

American.

If your pasta is claggy its because you haven't rinsed and cooled it properly!

What is ambrosia salad???

Looks like vomit. And smells and tastes actually. It's like a fruit salad but very very wrong.

The winter version is American sweet potatoes. I once watched open mouthed as an American made sweet potatoes with sugar, marshmallows and syrup and it was a 'savoury' dish. WTAF?

Yes, I'm not a pasta salad fan tbh. I can appreciate the appeal of some mentioned here though. I do like homemade potato salad, coleslaw etc

Pasta salads of any description are horrible imo, as are rice salads . I don’t mind couscous salads though, as long as the ingredients are vegetable though rather than bloody tuna which is thrown in everything these days. I love winter foods the best. Roll on October 😁

I am not a carb-avoider but am with you on the pasta salad. Minging. Cold, stodge.

@EggInANest

Enjoy.

I agree. Ghastly, craggy stuff. And sweetcorn added makes it even worse, horrible farty-smelling stuff.

My Italian friends are aghast at the thought of this abomination !

Just don't eat it.

And what, I hear you cry, is Cool Whip?

These are the ingredients:
Cool Whip Original is made of water, hydrogenated vegetable oil (including coconut and palm kernel oils), high fructose corn syrup, corn syrup, skimmed milk, light cream (less than 2%), sodium caseinate, natural and artificial flavor, xanthan and guar gums, polysorbate 60, sorbitan monostearate, sodium polyphosphate, and beta carotene (as a colouring).[12]

Makes ultra processed food look like a healthy option.

Nothing with dill makes a good anything.

Love it! Not pasta salad - a competitive food snobbery thread 😍

Everyone pretending never to have come across tuna pasta salad and tutting at the OP for not being Italian enough, like them. Perfect!

I'd have pasta salad with mayo and sweetcorn over rice Salad any day of the week.....although I've never been in a situation where I've been obliged to eat either of them.

Oh, mate. The chippiness on here can be exhausting, all delivered with passive aggressive, lolz emojis.

I strongly suspected that no Italian would eat it.

Even the posh more appetising versions posted here.

I don’t believe that Italians eat Tuna Pasta Bake either, rightly identified as the winter alternative (but at least it is hot pasta).

I love pasta salad in all its forms. I have cold pasta for lunch every day at work - no mayo though, I have farfalle with pesto, roasted tomatoes and crumbled feta - I’m a creature of habit! I do also love a tuna mayo pasta salad though.

I don't like mayo based ones but I love really (like REALLY) oily ones

😂Oh I know!

Am wishing we had a pasta salad lifestyle, but have zero bbq invites. Would shovel down some claggy pasta salad and cheap rose in a heartbeat.

I don’t do pasta salad. I don’t like the mayo ones and the oil based ones always look much nicer than taste.

Couscous is pasta…

Well, before a MN pasta war breaks out:
This wasn’t a wholly full-furrowed brow serious thread
I am so totally a good snob when I want to be (and not when something theoretically disgusting but delicious beckons)
I think I have been to too many PTA BBQs —and my ILs—

I do like pasta with oil and pecorino in the summer but it needs to be hot.

I'm no food snob, I love pasta salad, any kind.