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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 am
Not a fan of pasta. Never have been but it was nice.
A great salad. Tasty and filling.
Love this as a summer salad ! Flavors. Textures. I couldn’t use tomatoes or fetta but I do know when I ate this kind of salad years ago with those that they made it great. I also added pesto to my salad for extra flavor punch and it was great. Side of salmon for protein
Delicious! Filling with the beans and pasta. Wonderful flavour profile especially with the sun-dried tomatoes. I used a local pre-made vinaigrette with similar ingredients. Glad I made enough for leftovers. My favourite salad in the challenge thus far!
This salad was really good. I don’t have an herb garden and the recipe uses a little of a lot of different herbs so that gets expensive with some waste if can’t find another use before they go bad.
Salad Challenge: Day 7. Really enjoyed the vibrant flavours of the herbs and sundried tomatoes in this salad. One thing to note is that in the Salad Challenge document which has quantities for 2 people, the 16 oz. of dry pasta in the online version for 8 people, when divided by 4 comes to 4 oz. The recipe for 2 then converts this to half a cup. The original recipe I’m pretty sure shows a weight measurement not a volume measurement. Half a cup of dry pasta is much less by volume than what you get if you weigh 4 oz. of dry pasta.
This is my third or fourth time making this pasta salad. I love how versatile it is and how well it keeps for lunches throughout the week. I keep the greens separate until the day I plan to eat them so they don’t wilt. Thanks for a great recipe!
Yes, that’s a great idea! Yummy leftovers!
This one is so very good! Better than I thought it would be! I added pepitas, sunflower seeds, and green olives, salt and pepper. Yum!
This is flavorful and I liked the addition of the greens and beans. Definitely a keeper!
Very tasty and lots of variety of flavors and textures. Swapped the cannelini beans for the leftover chickpeas. Used red lentil penne pasta to stay away from gluten. No tomatoes due to allergies, but added in cucumbers. Vinaigrette is well balanced and not too sweet. Forget to cut green onion from the garden before the sun set, so did without. Definitely a salad that can be done on a larger scale to share with a large group.
It was good. I would make the vinaigrette with less maple syrup.
Day 7: Healthy Pasta Salad-changes I made. I used Spring Mix, chickpeas, and kalamata olives since that’s what I needed to use up. I didn’t have vegan feta so I omitted. I used 1T of oil vs 2.
Taste: I loved this dressing too! Anything with pasta is my friend. The salad’s really tasty and quite easy to make. Another keeper!
Another great option to add a little change to your routine! This had a lot of different flavors going on…in a good way! Great salad overall and very filling.
It was good but I used to much oil.
I wasn’t sure about this recipe with the maple syrup and pasta with arugula. I will be making it again.
Rawesome, so glad you enjoyed it!
Awesome salad! We didn’t tweak this one much. Black olives only on one of ours. Loved this dressing.
This one was really good. I have been sharing my salads with my mom who is very picky. So far she has enjoyed each salad. But today’s pasta salad she went for seconds.