Hey everyone. Hope you are super amazing. Here we’re going to show you vegan salad pasta that is downright delicious that was really cheesy but you know we feel like pasta salad kind of gets a bad rep or maybe there are more varieties of it that we could open ourselves too. Instead of sticking to that, you know traditional picnic pasta salad where it’s dressing like a kind of oily kind of okay seasoning. We decided to get a little bit more creative here and do some fusion flavor twists to make our pasta salad a little bit more interesting or just amp up the flavors and take that texture level to the next level.
If you like Vegan salad pasta it’s a great excuse to say you’re eating a salad but not actually having leafy greens in it and still eating pasta which is like ideal uh so if you’re interested stay tuned because we’re going to show you how to make them now.
1) Buffalo Cauliflower vegan salad pasta
To start making our Vegan salad pasta, First up we’re going to make a buffalo cauliflower vegan pasta salad combining our favorite vegan alternative to buffalo wings with a pasta salad.
So you’re going to start out by dicing half of a head of cauliflower into small florets and then here we’re topping it with some vegan buffalo wing sauce and some garlic powder.
We’re just keeping it super simple just going to quickly mix it together with a spatula until all of the pieces are lightly and evenly coated.
Then we’re going to transfer this to a lined baking tray and just toss the pan around or you can use a spatula. Just to make sure the pieces are spread out pretty evenly.
So we’re gonna pop that in the oven and in the meantime we’re going to cook some pasta on the stove.
Then we’re going to make the dressing for our pasta salad by combining more buffalo wing sauce with tahini, may sound strange but we promise it’s delicious. If you’re not a fan you can use coconut yogurt or sour cream as well.
We’re also adding a little bit of garlic powder and some water uh to help thin it out and then we’re just going to whisk all of this together until the tahini emulsifies into the water and hot sauce and we get this thick creamy delectable dressing.
You can also prep all of your other veggies in the meantime and then once the cauliflower is done roasting it should look a little something like below.
We’re looking for those nice crispy edges to add more depth of flavor to our pasta salad.
So now it is time to assemble once your pasta is cooked you’re going to rinse it with cold water until it comes to room temperature.
Then add it to a bowl along with our roasted cauliflower, a can of chickpeas, some sliced celery, grated carrot green onions, and then here we’re adding some fresh dill but you could also use another fresh herb like parsley or cilantro or leave it out if fresh herbs aren’t your thing.
Then, of course, we’re going to top it with our creamy tahini buffalo dressing.
And then all that’s left to do now is just toss everything together until it is evenly coated in our dressing and all the ingredients are evenly distributed throughout the bowl. so it should look a little something like below.
Once you’re done mixing and then from here you know clean up your bowl and then plate it and serve it as desired. we love this Buffalo Cauliflower vegan salad pasta. we feel like it’s a really unique combination of flavors and we love how the celery and carrot are still nice and crunchy then you get the heartiness from the chickpea in the pasta and then the spicy tanginess from the dressing helps to cut through more of the hardiness to make it a well-rounded and refreshing meal.
2) Taco Vegan Salad Pasta
Here we’re going to be making a taco vegan salad pasta. This is definitely more tex-mex inspired in no way is it traditional Mexican food and like always with the pasta salad, we’re going to cook our pasta. We’re using shells because we thought it was fun because they look like mini tacos but you can use any shape you want.
And then while that’s cooking we’re actually going to sear our corn so here we’re just using frozen corn but you can use fresh corn as well.
We’ve put it in a nonstick skillet over medium-high heat and we didn’t add any liquid, any water, any oil, anything to the pan. We’re just mixing it around with the spatula and sort of searing it dry searing it. We suppose as you can see below, we’re starting to get more brown build-up on the bottom of the pan.
We’re just going to continue to do this for as long as possible until we get these nice char marks on our corn it should take about seven to ten minutes.
At this point, you can deglaze the pan with a small amount of water, and then you’re going to stir everything with a spatula. It’s going to scrape the brown bits off the bottom of the pan and put them on the corn.
So this makes our corn have a little bit more of a smoky flavor and maybe less of a sweet flavor as well. We think it makes a difference and would highly recommend it for this pasta salad.
So now we’re just going to assemble our pasta salad. We’re going to start with the dressing. Here we’re using the homemade vegan mayo you can also use store-bought. Then we’re adding some lime juice and some chili powder blend and some salt.
Then you’re just going to whisk everything together until it’s evenly incorporated it’ll look a little thick but that’s fine.
Then we’re going to add in our drained and cooled pasta.
And we’re going to be adding some black beans our seared corn, some sliced tomatoes, some vegan cheddar cheese. This is technically optional but we do think it adds to the flavor a lot.
We’re also going to add some finely diced red onion and some finely chopped cilantro stems because they taste like the leaves but they’re not going to get wilty once we mix everything together.
So now again we’re just going to stir until everything is evenly distributed everything’s nice and coated and there’s no more sort of a pool of dressing on the bottom of the bowl.
It should look a little bit something like below and it looks good but you know we think it could look a little bit fresher we think you guys probably agree with us.
But don’t worry we’re going to spruce it up. So we recommend adding these final toppings right at the end so when you’re ready to serve put it in a bowl your Taco vegan salad pasta. And then we’re going to deck it out with some fresh cilantro leaves as well as some chunks of ripe avocado.
So these pops of green are going to make the salad feel and look nice and fresh and they just take the flavor profile to the next level as well.
So that’s it for this recipe. It legitimately tastes like a tex-mex taco the dressing makes it and we love all the add-ins which are things that we would traditionally put in tacos if we were making them at home. So hope you guys try this one out.
3) Mediterranean-inspired Vegan Salad Pasta
At the last, we’re going to make a Mediterranean-inspired vegan salad pasta. This recipe is sort of a hodgepodge of a variety of Mediterranean ingredients that we love. So we hope you guys love it too again we’re going to start out by cooking our pasta.
Then in the meantime, we’re going to make our dressing by adding some lemon juice a little bit of olive oil, and some dijon mustard to a bowl. Along with a finely diced garlic clove and some Italian seasoning, we’re also going to add some salt.
And then we’re going to whisk that together the lemon juice is going to mellow out the raw garlic a little bit.
And we’re also going to add some tofu so instead of using vegan feta cheese we’re just using super firm tofu here for a similar but not identical consistency.
But we’re going to let the tofu sit in this marinade to really absorb those flavors you can even let this sit overnight if you want to make it ahead of time.
We’re just gonna let it sit for about 30 minutes today which is also great and now it’s time to assemble so we’re going to add our pasta to a bowl.
Along with some quartered artichoke hearts some sliced Persian cucumbers and our marinated tofu.
And don’t forget to include all of the dressings that are going to be the dressing for our pasta salad as well We’re also adding in some kalamata olives and some sun-dried tomatoes here.
And then again we’re going to mix everything up. So one of the great things about vegan food is when you marinate something you can repurpose the marinade into the actual dressing.
Then now once the pasta salad is assembled here we’ve just topped it with some fresh basil and some fresh oregano leaves because again we think it makes it look a little bit more fresh and fun and then we’ve also topped it with some freshly cracked black pepper and that is it for this recipe.
It’s really yummy and satisfying we feel like it’s more of a traditional vegan salad pasta but we feel like it’s a good combination of textures as well.
So That’s all the three vegan salad pasta for you guys. Tell us know in the comments which one of these vegan salad pasta was your favorite. We feel like they all have different applications in terms of what we’re craving so you know some days we might crave one more than the other.
You can try our other easy recipes for Top 10 salads, paneer tikka, pizzas at home. Get Delicious recipes daily on our Instagram. Thank you so much, everyone. Happy cooking.
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