Looking for a light and healthy pasta salad recipe that you can feel good about serving your family this summer? This Mediterranean pasta salad is just as delicious as it is healthy.
For a long time, I thought that pasta and eating healthy were two mutually exclusive things. This was frustrating because I really love pasta. If you ask me, as far as comfort food goes there is no better. When I started clean eating, I was shocked to learn that as long as I stayed away from white pasta I could enjoy pasta salad recipes! Yipee! I really love coming up with healthy pasta recipes. (Of course, if you aren’t eating clean than I’m sure this would be lovely with regular pasta).
What type of pastas work? Whole wheat of course. But I like quinoa pasta and brown rice pasta because they are gluten-free which makes them ideal for gluten free recipes.
Now, a couple of things to keep in mind with this penne pasta salad recipe. First, if you use salt make sure it is mineral based sea salt. It’s worth taking a trip to your local Whole Foods or natural foods store to get unrefined sea salt. You can read more here about why you should stay away from table salt but why sea salt is good for you.
Traditional vinegar based dressings have three parts oil to one part vinegar. While this is certainly delicious, it isn’t exactly ideal for clean eating. I have reduce the oil to one tablespoon but feel free to increase it should you desire. Likewise, you can also omit the oil all together. In this case I would add vegetable broth, cooking liquid from the pasta or perhaps a tablespoon of chia gel.
