This easy vegan pasta salad recipe is quick to make, it’s refreshing and seasoned with a delicious lemon-mustard vinaigrette dressing. It’s perfect for a quick spring and summer lunch, and if you have some leftover, you can pack it up and bring it for a picnic in the park. Oh, and make sure you make enough for your friends. They’ll love it!
Why didn’t we do this recipe before?! That is what came out of our mouth straight after eating the first forkful of this simple but delicious vegan pasta salad. A few minutes later, we had eaten the whole bowl that you see in the picture!
Ok, fine. We are always super hungry after cooking and shooting recipes. But this dish really surprised us!
This easy vegan pasta salad recipe with avocado and lemon-mustard vinaigrette dressing is just…well…perfect! You can make it in no time, it’s fulfilling, it has a good bite, it’s full of veggies, and has some good healthy fats, too, with the extra virgin olive oil and the creamy avocado.
If you want to increase the protein content feel free to add a can of chickpeas, they’ll go amazing with it. Here’s a breakdown of the recipe’s ingredients:
Dry Italian pasta is 100 percent naturally vegan and contrary to popular belief, quite healthy. Pick one made with hard wheat flour, water, and nothing else. We prefer farfalle (butterfly) shaped pasta for this recipe as they look pretty and have a great bite. You can use any short pasta like penne, fusilli, maccheroni, etc.
Coarse sea salt is a must for pasta cooking when salting the pasta water. Imported from Italy or France is best. Green asparagus: we prefer green for the color. Any type of small vine tomato is fine as long as is bright red. We want this for color and sweetness. Sweet corn adds sweetness, crunch, and color.
Black pitted olives add umami to this salad. Make sure you get olives without pits. Olives in brine are fine, make sure you drain the salted water away before tossing them in the salad. We prefer black ones for the color. Red bell pepper is perfect for crunch, color, and sweetness. Green peppers are too sour. Yellow and orange work too. Get a ripe avocado, but not an over-ripe one, or it’ll mash and cloud the pasta salad. Avocado is perfect to add some healthy fats and creaminess to this recipe. Red onion or shallots. Red is best for color. Keep some extra fine sea salt and black pepper at hand for a final seasoning touch.
[amd-zlrecipe-recipe:325]Enjoyed this vegan pasta salad? For more delicious and healthy recipes try making this nutty Asian-style vegan avocado cucumber salad. It’s so tasty and can be whipped up in under 20 minutes!
This recipe was republished with permission from The Plant-Based School.
