Vegan Suddenly Salad, motherfucker — look at me, I’m Betty Crocker now.

As always, if you dig this recipe, tag me at @draggedthroughthegarden on instagram and we can talk about how pasta salad is how Midwesterners trick themselves into thinking they’re eating healthy.

The Vegan Suddenly Salad. The uh, bacon & ranch one.

THE VEGAN SUDDENLY SALAD

prep time: 5 minutes
cook time: 15 minutes

Need a break from hot pasta? Try this cold pasta.

This recipe requires you to cook some shells and add some peas and carrots. Oh yeah, and bacon bits and a mayo/ranch based dressing.

Here are pretty much the main components. Well, outside of the pasta that it.

What you’ll need:

pasta shells (the smaller ones)
frozen petite/young peas
baby carrots
bacon bits (most of them are vegan, just double check)
vegan mayo
vegan ranch
garlic powder
onion powder
salt
pepper
dried dill
dried parsley
olive oil

To start, get out a pot and add enough water to cook your pasta. Please salt the pasta water. Once your water is boiling, add the entire box of pasta shells and give it a quick stir. Drop the flame to a simmer and put a lid on it. Set a timer for ten minutes (it may take a little longer but just for a quick reference point.) You want the pasta to cook a little bit longer than if you were to do it al dente.

Check back in ten minutes but you’ll probably need one or two more after that.

While your pasta is cooking, dice up some baby carrots. You can use shreds if you have them too, as long as they’re carrots. Get the peas out of the freezer if you haven’t already.

In a bowl, add a half tablespoon each of salt, pepper, dried dill & dried parsley. Then add half a tablespoon of garlic powder and onion powder. Now slap half a cup of vegan mayo in there and mix it up. Squeeze a generous squeeze of vegan ranch in there too. This is your dressing. Add more mayo & ranch if needed.

After your pasta is done cooking, drain it and save a little bit of that pasta water. Put the pasta back into the pot in which it cooked and throw a quick splash of olive oil in there.

While your pasta is still kinda hot in the pot, add half a cup of your frozen peas directly in there. This will help defrost them a little bit. Now take your big bowl of mayo-ranch and dump it into the pot and stir until your pasta is evenly coated. Again, if you have to add more mayo/ranch, knock your socks off.

Toss all of your diced up carrots in there. And next you’re going to add a shitload of bacon bits. Most bacon bits are in fact vegan, who knew.

Add literally as much of the bacon bits as you want. Now mix it up and transfer everything to a bowl. You can use the bowl you mixed the dressing in…maybe just give it a quick wipe first. Put it in the fridge and it will only take like twenty minutes to set to temperature.

You don’t have to break this off into portions, just eat the whole thing.

Now add more bacon bits if you want. Now perhaps Betty Crocker isn’t a person, but an idea. And today — Betty Crocker is you.