Chicken Pasta Salad (with Creamy Greek Yogurt Dressing)

This creamy rooster pasta salad is totally loaded with goodies: bacon, peppers, broccoli, corn, feta cheese, rooster, and tomatoes… all tossed along with a tangy, herby buttermilk Greek yogurt dressing. This huge pasta salad can feed a crowd, and it additionally makes for excellent leftovers.

What started just a few years in the past as a “throw a bunch of leftovers along with some chilly pasta” dinner has turn into a summertime staple in my home. Pasta + rooster + veggies + bacon + cheese + straightforward. This rooster pasta salad is a profitable mixture for certain. And it all comes along with a tangy home made dressing that’s almost inconceivable to cross up.

It’s the pasta salad for these of us who like loads of STUFF in our salads. 😉

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Right here’s Why You’ll Love This Rooster Pasta Salad:

• Endlessly customizable—add your favourite greens, attempt a distinct cheese, or make it vegetarian
• Creamy, tangy dressing made with low-fat buttermilk and Greek yogurt
• Handy make-ahead recipe, similar to my creamy strawberry feta pasta salad
• Makes an enormous batch, good to take to a BBQ or different gathering
• Scrumptious leftovers make for a fast and straightforward lunch or dinner

If it’s a vegetable and you’ve got it readily available, you need to throw it into this pasta salad. Like artichokes, olives, shredded carrots, diced cucumbers, chickpeas, you get the concept! With that in thoughts, right here’s my beginning lineup of elements:

Base Substances in Creamy Rooster Pasta Salad

• Pasta: I like fusilloni or rotini finest right here as a result of the corkscrew form captures a lot of the creamy dressing. Use any brief pasta that’s straightforward to eat (let’s keep away from fettuccini right here!), and has a lot of nooks and crannies to carry onto dressing.
• Chopped Cooked Rooster: This may be grilled, poached, rotisserie roasted—no matter you occur to have readily available. I want grilled or rotisserie.
• Cherry Tomatoes: You’ll love the little juicy pops of taste these give the pasta salad. They’re probably the greatest components of this kale pesto mozzarella pasta salad, too!
• Broccoli: Chop recent broccoli florets into small items—no have to cook dinner it. Once I don’t have broccoli readily available, I often sub in cucumbers.
• Cooked Corn: Candy, crisp corn scraped off the cob is the tastiest on this pasta salad, however frozen and thawed or canned corn work too.
• Bell Pepper: Pink, orange, yellow—take your choose from the pack of peppers. (Say that 5 occasions quick!)
• Feta Cheese: Salty, creamy feta cheese crumbles style so good on this salad, however be at liberty to swap in a distinct cheese.
• Cooked Bacon: Crisp and crumbled bacon bits add unimaginable taste to every chunk.

Whereas the pasta cooks, prep the opposite elements and make the salad dressing.

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Buttermilk Herb Greek Yogurt Dressing

Now let’s discuss concerning the dressing! Although there’s already a lot to like on this pasta salad, the dressing really makes the entire dish come collectively. The base is low-fat/nonfat Greek yogurt and low-fat buttermilk. For those who can’t discover buttermilk, you should utilize complete milk and add an additional teaspoon of lemon juice, however you’ll lose some taste and creaminess. Add a bit of mayonnaise, a drizzle of olive oil, some recent herbs, a squeeze of lemon, a splash of vinegar, and a sprinkle of seasonings. It tastes tangy, creamy, and oh-so-much-better than store-bought dressing. It jogs my memory a bit of of the Greek yogurt sauce that pairs so properly with these zucchini fritters.

This recipe makes about 2 cups of dressing. It could look like lots, however the pasta soaks up lots because it sits, and there are additionally so many add-ins—this recipe feeds a crowd!

Place the nice and cozy pasta, chopped veggies, and rooster in an enormous bowl, and pour many of the dressing on high. Stir to mix and coat all the pieces with dressing, then add the crumbled feta and bacon and stir once more. That’s it! There’s extra work in chopping all of the greens than really making this dish.

You possibly can take pleasure in it immediately, however I prefer it finest after it sits for a pair hours within the fridge. The flavors develop a bit of extra, turning this into pasta perfection.

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Success Tip: Save a Little Dressing for Serving

Save the final little bit (just a few Tablespoons) of dressing to stir into the pasta salad proper earlier than serving, so it tastes additional creamy and flavorful. I’ve been making this recipe for years, and I simply found this little trick. What a distinction it makes! You see, because the pasta salad sits, it absorbs increasingly more of that scrumptious dressing and might start to clump collectively. Give it a bit of refresher to loosen it up, and so as to add one other sprint of taste.

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Success Tip: Hold the Pasta Heat

Don’t let the cooked and drained pasta cool for too lengthy. Heat pasta mixes simpler, and helps the flavors within the dish *pop.* As a bonus, the nice and cozy pasta begins to melt the feta cheese, so the dish is even creamier. So good.

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