Macro Friendly Pasta Salad that only requires 4 ingredients! Perfect side dish to bring to any party or super simple dish to make for a meal prep! Shown above is a serving of the pasta salad which comes out to 128g in weight and 162 calories 6P/27C/3F. The big thing that can make pasta salad have not the friendliest macros is that they can be high in fat from a large amount of oil based dressings or high fat additions like cheese, avocado, and olives. Since pasta salad is typically a party food/side and since most parties will already have foods/treats that are higher in fats then I thought having a lighter and easy pasta salad could be a great recipe to have!
I kept this pasta salad super simple, but you can definitely add in more veggies to make it MORE nutrient dense! I added sautéed spinach to it here and loved it! And since this recipe is so low in fat you can have the easy option to add in those other fats without worrying about overdoing it on the fat macros for this dish 🤗
I LOVE these Wacky Mac Veggie Spirals! Easy to make and packed with nutrient dense ingredients!
I also added a 10 oz container of grape tomatoes which I sliced with this cool trick I saw on the Food Network! You simply put a bunch of your tomatoes between two plates and then slide a knife between the plates to cut the tomatoes!
Saves A BUNCH OF TIME as opposed to slicing them individually!
Remember how I was mentioning that a lot of pasta salads are higher in fat because of their dressings? Well here’s my solution! I still used a delicious high fat Roasted Tomato, Parmesan, & Basil Dressing BUT I kept it in moderation by only using 4 tbsp(60g) (while most pasta salad recipes say to use an entire bottle of Italian dressing) and mixed it with 75g Nonfat Greek Yogurt, salt, and a bit of water. This let me have that great taste without overdoing it on the calories!
I added in teaspoons of water as I whisked it to check that I was getting a good dressing consistency. It ended up being probably 1.5 tbsp of water but this can vary depending on the greek yogurt and salad dressing you mix it with.
Last step is to toss the pasta and tomatoes in the sauce and enjoy!
I figured out that a serving was 128g by weighing my container before adding anything (500g) and then weighing it again after I added everything (1785g) and subtracting those amounts to make the total weight of the pasta salad 1285g. Then I just divided that by 10 to say that it makes 10 servings at 128g each.
Macros per serving:
Ingredient List:
