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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!
We really liked this one! I used garbanzo & made an easy vegan feta. We’ll look forward to having this one again. (Next time more pasta & garbanzos.)
I made mine hot! Very good!
This Healthy pasta salad was awesome. I used Gluten free pasta as I have Celiac and used Goat Cheese feta as I am also dairy free. Good flavors and textures. This was my husbands favorite so far. Took some to my lil’ Italian neighbor and friend and she really enjoyed it as well.
Very tasty. It doesn’t actually have a lot of pasta in it, so I don’t have to feel guilty when eating it. Good combo of flavours. Filling.
Easy to put together. Next time will use larger pasta. This time used protein added elbow macaroni which seemed like the ratio was a little too much pasta.
How can every salad be great. This one was so filling with the beans and the flavors Oh My. So perfect for a quiet Sunday afternoon.
This was a great pasta salad. If possible make a couple hours before serving so the flavors infuse.
That’s a great suggestion!
Good flavor. I used lima beans in place of cannelini.
Loved this salad and the dressing was delicious!
Really enjoyed this salad. I doubled the recipe to have leftovers. I used chickpeas instead of white beans since I had some left over from another salad this week. I also used some marinated artichokes. When I make it again, I think I’ll use some shredded carrots, and some thawed frozen peas. The dressing and the feta cheese mellowed the strong peppery flavor of the arugula. I used it as a supper time salad, but will only use it as a side next time as it was too much for me. This is one salad that you can modify easily to fit your taste buds.
We really liked this one! I used garbanzo & made an easy vegan feta. We’ll look forward to having this one again. (Next time more pasta & garbanzos.)
Pasta salad was very dry but that was probably my fault since I used a whole box of pasta instead of what the recipe called for. I increased the add ins but not the dressing. I ended up adding a bottled cilantro lime dressing that I had and it helped. Hopefully the leftover pasta salad will be better once the dressing has time to meld with the other ingredients. Next time I will follow directions more closely.
This is no ordinary pasta salad; in fact, it is GREAT! I opted to use a little more arugula and wilt it a bit and make this a tepid/warm salad. I lightly sautéed some small bits of asparagus, and added the cannellini beans and including several different colors of peppers. The dressing was easy to make and we opted out of using the maple syrup. In lieu of the vegan feta I used almond milk shreds from Trader Joes. All of the flavors were quite magical together. Will definitely become a staple in our household!
Way to make it your own, it sounds SOOO good!
This is definitely a keeper for me. My husband liked it too. He has never had so many salads. I used red lentil pasta and topped it with a bit of goat cheese. It was a great meal to have after a weekend of long-distance cycling and running.
This was wonderful. We discussed things to add to make it a dinner meal as we savored the salad. Will make again Dressing great too. I used 1 T of sun dried tomatoEVOO and 1 T of roasted onion EVOO We paired it with barley soup made from leftover barley. Great meal.
Loved the pasta salad lots of colour and great taste!
Not gonna lie, I didn’t make it as written. Not a fan of arugula, so subbed with baby spinach. Subbed leftover cherry tomatoes for the sundried tomatoes. Wasn’t impressed with the dressing, it was pretty bland. We added our favorite Italian dressing and it was much better.