Errori comuni nel fare l'insalata di pasta

Common mistakes in making pasta salad   Loretta Sebastiani

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Common mistakes in making pasta salad

• - 1) Pasta is often cooked in a small amount of water!
  Remember ... you need one litre per 100 grams of pasta. You can know more in my post about cooking Italian pasta.
• - 2) Pasta is not drained and cooled well. Read my tips to make a good pasta salad.
• - 3) Pasta is cooked, drained and kept for a long time in the colander while you are preparing all other ingredients.
  What a mistake! Generally, pasta  becomes sticky in few minutes and it’s difficult it absorbs well the sauce  after. I always suggest to prepare pasta sauce at least 1 hour ahead, then cook pasta, drain, combine with its sauce and let pasta salad rest about 30 minutes before serving.
• - 4) Many people use to prepare a pasta salad dressing with mayonnaise, a lot of olive oil, Dijon mustard and even honey … no, no, no! It’s a mistake for a lot of reasons.
  It’s a crime to dress Italian pasta in this way and call it Italian pasta salad. In Italy we dress pasta only with olive oil or butter. It isn’t healthy to prepare pasta salad in this way. It is not an example of Mediterranean diet. Have you any idea of calories, fat and sugars that are in such a dish? If you browse this directory dedicated to pasta salad ideas,  you can read recipes and their nutrition facts easily. My recipes are rich in ingredients but standard in fat and calories. To browse look at the navigation bar on the top and breadcrumbs under it!
• - 5) Be careful in the choice of pasta salad sauce ingredients. In other words, combine ingredients that work well together! My husband and I have often seen this mistake: carrots and beets with vinegar! Someone might argue that it is a matter of taste, but in this case the combination is not good for problems related to digestion.
  Another tip: pasta salad is a summer dish and then ... pasta sauce ingredients must be seasonal!
• - 6) Finally, we have also seen cutting bell peppers into pieces and adding them raw to pasta salad together with boiled chicken and other ingredients. It’ s another mistake! You have to grill or steam bell peppers  if you want to combine with cooked meat. Palatability is not achieved by mixing raw and cooked ingredients. The thing is different if you want to dress your pasta only with raw vegetables.

There are other mistakes we have seen recently but those ones, listed above, are the most common.

We hope we can help you in making authentic Italian recipes and, first of all, tasty and healthy recipes =_^