Change Up Your Usual Pasta Salad By Swapping In Spaghetti

With cooking, there are a few culinary rules that you always need to stick to. For example, you should always keep your knives sharp and never add extra spices without tasting your food first. Yet, there are a few rules that are more like suggestions. For example, never using spaghetti for pasta salad isn't a hard and fast rule.

Some people may tell you to stick to small, spiraled shapes since they're the absolute best pasta to use for pasta salad. And while they do work well, switching it up with spaghetti never hurts. Experimenting with the longer pasta can result in incredible dishes. With spaghetti's thin shape, creating a lightweight, refreshing salad is best for the pasta.

Look to Greek or Italian cuisine for bright and zesty flavors such as goat cheese, sweet peppers, or zucchini steeped in vinegar to complement the pasta. Adapt mandarin chicken pasta salad – an Asian-fusion recipe — to bring a sweet, citrus flair to spaghetti.

As a thin, delicate pasta, it's best to use thicker sauces and dressings for the pasta salad. Although a vinaigrette is a popular choice for pasta salads, it may not adhere to spaghetti as well. Instead, spring for a bright and fresh pesto. Its thick, paste-like texture is perfect for spaghetti.

With typical pasta salads, many of the toppings are about the same size as the pasta itself, as this ensures that each bite of the salad contains an equal amount of the ingredients. Since spaghetti has a narrow diameter, opt for smaller ingredients when compiling your spaghetti salad. Minced red onions and julienne-cut sun-dried tomatoes fit better with the spaghetti in comparison to larger-sized toppings.

Since spaghetti is commonly slurped up, be mindful about the amount of toppings you add, as well. Keeping it to three or four basic, small ingredients will make eating the spaghetti salad a simpler, neater process.