Macaroni salad is a popular cold pasta side dish for picnics and barbecues. It typically includes cooked macaroni, pickles, hard-boiled eggs, green peppers, celery, and mayonnaise or salad dressing. Different ingredients and dressings can be used, and the salad should be refrigerated before serving.
Macaroni salad is a cold pasta salad commonly used as a side dish at picnics, barbecues, and covered plate “potluck” dinners. The main ingredient in a macaroni salad is obviously macaroni pasta, but shapes can range from elbow to rotini to shell. The shape of the pasta should be relatively small in order to accommodate all the mixtures of other ingredients and toppings. A typical macaroni salad contains cooled cooked pasta, sweet or dill pickles, diced hard-boiled eggs, green peppers, diced celery, and mayonnaise or salad dressing. Macaroni salad recipes can vary widely from region to region.
A good macaroni salad starts with a stock of cooked macaroni that has been rinsed in cold water and allowed to drain. Cold pasta salads work best when the starch has been washed off the pasta, unlike spaghetti dishes where the sauce should stick to the unwashed pasta. When using shell macaroni or other shapes with pockets, the pasta should be shaken vigorously to remove any excess water trapped in the folds.
The cooled paste can be placed in a large bowl while the other ingredients are prepared. The proportions of these additional ingredients are a matter of preference, but in general the ratio should be in favor of the pasta, not the accessories. The chopped pickles or pickle relish give macaroni salad a nice tart bite, but should be used sparingly to avoid overpowering the overall dish.
After chopped pickles are added, some macaroni salad recipes call for a few pieces of diced green pepper for color and flavor. Celery could also be used to give macaroni salad a crunchy texture, but a little goes a long way. Chopped hard-boiled eggs, both whites and yolks, can also be added to macaroni salad to give it a chewier texture and absorb some of the flavors created by the dressing as the ingredients marry.
Other ingredients might include finely chopped white or green onions, celery salt, or Italian herbs such as oregano and dried parsley. Some recipes allow dill weed if the pickles are omitted. This mixture of pasta and other ingredients should be gently mixed together in the bowl.
Different dressings can be used to make a flavorful pasta salad, but traditional macaroni salad generally uses a tangy mayonnaise-and-vinegar mixture or a creamy salad dressing to combine all the ingredients. You may need a generous supply of mayonnaise or salad dressing to achieve a creamy texture, but too much dressing can make macaroni salad too “wet.” The finished macaroni salad should be refrigerated before serving to allow the flavors to blend and the entire salad to tighten.
Some macaroni salad recipes, especially in the Deep South, suggest using a traditional mustard potato salad recipe, complete with pickles, eggs, and celery, and simply substituting boiled potato cubes for cold macaroni pasta. While a macaroni salad mustard dressing might not be traditional, it provides a sharper bite than plain mayonnaise and works well with other barbecue side dishes like baked beans and coleslaw.
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