Common Mistakes Everyone Makes With Pasta Salad

Using fresh pasta for pasta salad is a mistake because it’s more succulent and breaks down faster than dried pasta once cooked and dressed. It’s best to use dried pasta.

However, it's probably safe to experiment with fresh noodles in the case of warm pasta salad, which doesn't require cooling or standing in the fridge and can be eaten right away.

Longer pasta shapes make for a bad pasta salad experience. The sauce and other ingredients don't stick to them and it's harder to wrangle them when they're cold.

Instead, go for shapes with grooves, divots, nooks, and crannies that can hold onto the other ingredients. Fusilli, tortellini, or farfalle, which are also bite-sized, work best.

Even if you put a dressing on the end product, not salting your pasta water can result in bland pasta salad, as chilling pasta always leads to flavor loss.

To salt pasta water, add in 1 tablespoon of salt for every pound of pasta once the water starts boiling. For cold pasta, add an extra teaspoon of salt before you put your pasta in.

Pasta salad sits around for hours or days, absorbing more liquid from the dressing. Instead of cooking your pasta all the way, cook it until it’s barely al dente.

Cook the pasta according to the package's instructions and remove it from heat one to two minutes early for pasta that is not mushy with a bit of a bite to it.

Rinsing may help pasta cool faster and reduce stickiness, but it also removes valuable starch that helps the sauce stick. Instead, toss it with a bit of olive oil.

Doing so will prevent stickiness. You could also consider adding a bit of parmesan to the hot pasta to create a sticky foundation, onto which you can later pour your sauce.