Pasta Salad. This is a recipe for a very large amount of vegan pasta salad. Because you can’t see your friends, you can eat it alone! It will last less than 24 hours.

As always, if you dig this recipe, tag me at @draggedthroughthegarden on instagram and we can talk about how it’s healthy probably because it’s salad.

Plant Based Pasta Salad. Serves one.

VERY LARGE PASTA SALAD

prep time: 20 minutes
cook time: 10 minutes

Not pictured: my dignity.

This recipe requires you to dice up a lot of things and cook two boxes of rotini pasta al dente.

To start, you’re going to get your pasta going.

What you’ll need:

two boxes of rotini (tri-color if available)
sea salt
olive oil

Here is a full spread of everything in the dish:

Well, I forgot to include the olive oil and apple cider vinegar.

In a big pot, add five quarts (20 cups) of water. Add two tablespoons of salt and bring it up to a boil. For this recipe, you want your pasta to be slightly undercooked so it doesn’t get all mushy and weird later.

Once your water is boiling, add the two boxes of rotini. Give everything a stir, cover the pot and drop the flame down to a simmer. This is only going to take about 6-7 minutes to cook so definitely set a timer. If you use regular pasta or chickpea pasta, the times may vary slightly so be mindful.

When your pasta is al dente, drain the pot into a strainer and throw some cold water on your pasta. Give everything a shake to rid it of excess water and then throw a generous splash of olive oil on there. A little salt too.

Throw your pasta into a big bowl and stick it in the fridge while you prep the rest of the dish. Keep the strainer handy though.

Next, you are going to chop up all the other stuff that goes into the pasta salad. Really, you can add or omit anything you want but I will show you exactly how I made mine.

What you’ll need:

black olives
peperoncini
vegan pepperoni (I used the yves brand)
cherry/grape tomatoes
yellow pepper
orange pepper
vegan block of cheddar (I used violife)
salt
pepper
garlic powder

Open your olives and peperoncini. In the same strainer you left in the sink, throw both of those items in the strainer and rinse off thoroughly. Save some of the liquid in the peperoncini jar. Let them dry for a second and you can start with your peppers.

Dice down both your yellow and orange pepper into tiny little chunks. Cut all of your cherry tomatoes in half. Set those three things aside. Dice down your olives into cute little slices. Dice your peperoncini as well.

Open your block of vegan cheese and dice it down into small cubes. Open the vegan pepperoni and you can cut these if you want but I did not.

If you didn’t cut a finger off, your situation should look something like this.

Pull your enormous bowl of pasta out of the fridge and give it a stir. It’s probably not cold, cold yet but you can build the pasta salad now.

It’s like the same picture as the other one, but with pasta!

Little by little, add all of the stuff to the pasta while stirring everything up. Once everything is added, throw another generous splash of olive oil in there. Then add a bunch of salt, garlic powder and black pepper.

Look how good that looks. Go and sneak a bite, you earned it.

Last but not least, I’ll show you how to make the dressing that I used. You can use store-bought if you want but you already made it this far.

What you’ll need:

olive oil
apple cider vinegar
salt
garlic
fresh oregano
some of the liquid from the peperoncini jar

In one of those salad shaker things or whatever you want to build your dressing in, add three parts olive oil to one part apple cider vinegar. Shove a few whole sprigs of oregano in there along with two (or six) cloves of smashed garlic. Add as much salt as you want and give it a shake. Or a stir.

These are cool cause they strain it for you!

Let the dressing sit for five minutes and then pour it all over the salad. Here’s the hardest part. Cover the salad with cling wrap and toss it back in the fridge for an hour. You want it to be cold! After the hour is up, take a fork and eat the entire pasta salad in one sitting, directly out of the bowl.