Here’s the truth: There’s a lot of bad pasta salad out there. No one wants to eat an assemblage of limp, greasy vegetables and cardboard-like pasta. Fortunately, it’s possible to make a delicious pasta salad. The secret is to treat pasta salad like pasta, not salad: It should be sauced, not dressed in an acerbic vinaigrette; it shouldn’t be eaten cold; and the vegetables should be cooked. Follow these rules, and your pasta salad will be the star of every picnic and potluck you bring it to. (As our editorial director Daniel wrote in his guide to making a better pasta salad, “we don’t want pasta prepped as a salad, we want pasta that just happens to taste good when not hot.”) Below, we’ve gathered 11 stellar pasta salads—including a punchy Italian-American pasta salad, classic creamy macaroni salad, and cold sesame noodles—that you’ll want to make all summer long.
