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I have a hard time eating leftovers for lunch every day. Instead, I’m always hunting easy yet tasty lunches that don’t take much prep work. I know that sounds like a unicorn, but it’s not! My healthy pasta salad checks all the boxes (and has a good amount of protein as well). Feel free to keep it a vegan with the vegan feta or toss in your favorite cheese if you can tolerate it.
While I created this healthy pasta salad with lunch in mind, it works great as a shareable side at as a healthy BBQ side dish, potluck or family meal.
How to Make Healthy Pasta Salad
I set out to create this healthy pasta salad after Rawkstar Jennifer told me she was looking for quick and healthy recipes that her high schooler could take to school. I love how the different flavors mix in this recipe without meat or dairy.
Cook the pasta
Follow cooking directions on the pasta package, allowing the pasta to remain slightly undercooked. This will help keep the pasta from falling apart in the salad. Drain and rinse with cold water until pasta is completely cool, then drain well again.
Prepare the vinaigrette
While the pasta is cooling, mix all the Basic Vinaigrette ingredients in a bowl until combined.
Mix in vegetables
Place cooled pasta into a large bowl and add the vegetables and herbs. Gently toss.
Add dressing and mix well
Drizzle Basic Vinaigrette over the pasta salad and gently toss again. Cover and refrigerate until ready to serve.
Meal Prepping Tip
Transfer the salad to airtight containers and store it in the refrigerator until ready to use. Follow my Meal Prep Salad tutorial to get the best containers and more in-depth tips.
Pasta Salad Ingredient Swaps
Probably my favorite part about this healthy pasta salad lunch is how much you can customize it to your taste preferences! Here are a few swaps I suggest if you want to try them:
- Swap olive oil with avocado oil.
- Swap red wine vinegar with the vinegar of your choice.
- Use your preferred pasta type, or use gluten-free.
- Cannellini beans can be swapped with another kind of legume (black beans, kidney beans or chickpeas are great swaps).
- Add the veggies of your choice! Radishes or cucumbers are great additions.
- Feel free to add nuts or seeds for an extra crunch.
I have a hard time eating the same thing over again, even when it’s as delicious as this vegan pasta salad. So you’ll find mine with a slight variation every time I make it, and that’s fine.
Storage Tips
Toss the salad well in the dressing as this helps it keep well in the fridge. Store in individual serving airtight containers to grab when you need to quickly. If you like your greens extra fresh, then wait to add those until you’re ready to eat, so they don’t wilt.
More Healthy Pasta Recipes
If you don’t use leftovers to fuel your lunch, you need to make or buy them every day. I love batching easy recipes for lunch that we can grab throughout the week. Here are a few more pasta recipes:
- Vegetable Noodle Soup: Instead of suffering through your next cold, turn to my vegetable noodle soup for the best home remedy recipe to kick that cold to the curb.
- Vegetarian Noodle Salad– toss together and enjoy throughout the week.
Take the guesswork out of lunch when you double or triple a recipe, then save it for the days ahead. The vegan pasta salad below is filling and doesn’t even need to be heated up to enjoy.
Healthy Pasta Salad
Ingredients
- ½ cup farfalle pasta
- ¾ cup arugula pre-washed
- ¾ cup cannellini beans canned, drained and well rinsed
- ¼ red bell pepper diced
- 1 green onion diced
- 2 tbsp black olives sliced
- 2 tbsp sun-dried tomatoes in oil
- 2 tbsp fresh basil, mint and parsley chopped
- ¼ cup vegan feta optional
Basic Vinaigrette
- 2 tbsp extra-virgin olive oil
- 1 tbsp red wine vinegar
- 1 tsp maple syrup
- 1 tsp Dijon mustard
- ½ garlic clove finely minced
- ⅛ tsp sea salt
- ⅛ tsp ground black pepper
Instructions
- Follow cooking directions on pasta package for "al dente" (which allows pasta to remain slightly undercooked). This will help keep the pasta from falling apart in the salad. Drain and rinse with cold water until pasta is completely cool.
- While the pasta is cooling, mix all the Basic Vinaigrette ingredients together in a bowl until combined.
- Place cooled pasta into a large bowl and add the vegetables and herbs. Gently toss. Drizzle Basic Vinaigrette over the pasta salad and gently toss again. Cover and refrigerate until ready to serve.
- If meal prepping, transfer the salad to airtight containers and store in refrigerator until ready to use.
Notes
- Use the pasta of your choice: bowtie, fusilli, shells, etc.
- Arugula has a strong, peppery flavor. You can swap with kale or spinach.
- Cannellini beans can be swapped with the legume of your choice.
- I love using basil, oregano and chives yet you can any fresh herbs.
Nutrition
Top Healthy Pasta Salad Questions
It doesn’t have to be! Ditch the store-made pasta salads made with additives and processed ingredients. Home make one instead with loads of fresh greens and a light, oil-based dressing.
This pasta salad should stay fresh in the fridge for up to five days since it is oil-based. Dairy or mayo-based salads will keep fewer days.
Choose a pasta salad that is oil-based (using healthy fats like olive oil or avocado oil) instead of dairy or mayonnaise-based, has plenty of fresh veggies and leafy greens and a good protein source like beans or tofu. This recipe’s got it all!
I used whole wheat penne and enjoyed it for lunch and will enjoy this for lunch tomorrow too
Excited to make it! I’m going to use honey to sweeten the dressing and mitigate the acid.
I liked it very much.
OMG this salad is delicious!! It’s everything you’d want for a tasty lunch. Love the bow tie pasta and all of the healthy ingredients and dressing.
Bow tie pasta is always fun!
Another yummy for the books.
1652 mg sodium per serving? That’s more than half of what should be eaten each day… I certainly expected to find this too salty, so I left it out of the vinaigrette and used fewer olives. Further, since I don’t care for sweetened dressings, I left out the syrup. I also used a brown rice pasta.
So good! I think this is the first time I’ve ever had arugula and it’s a winner for me! Teenage daughter liked it too. I just left out the olives. I love how easy the dressing is to make.
So glad you both enjoyed the Healthy Pasta Salad!
Loved this pasta salad we used this salad to complete a Greek dinner. We are not vegan and enjoy protein meat from time to time, so we paired this salad with chicken souvlaki.
Definitely will do this again.
Sounds so yummy!
My husband really liked this salad. I added extra fresh basil, mint, parsley and had the salad marinate longer. In addition I used kalamata olives which gave more flavor. In general I do not enjoy pasta salads, but this one turned out pretty good.
Pasta!! Who needs to say more? Yum
Yummy
This pasta salad was so good and very easy. It took no time at all. I will definitely be making this often in the summer time.
Good recipe. Kids liked it. Anything kids like gets 5 stars. Liked the combo of carbs, proteins and greens.
We enjoyed all the flavors. I added some artichoke that I had in the fridge and it went nicely with the flavor profile from the recipe.
Great combination of flavors! I never make pasta salads, so glad you had this one in the challenge. I love it.
I made this pasta salad and it was great until the next day. The pasta noodle hardened completely! I had to warm it up to soften the pasta. I did use gluten free but it was dressed as instructed. Why did it harden?
Thank u
Hmm. Was your storage container an air-tight container? That’s the only thing I could think of. Gluten free pasta should have been fine. I’m sorry that your pasta hardened. 🙁
I love that this pasta salad has leafy greens in it!
Absolutely, we love getting our greens in where we can! It’s a nice balance between having pasta and making it healthy.