Planning a potluck? Panic no more! Get 4 incredible, definitely not boring, summer salad recipes perfect for any gathering. From a Mediterranean pasta salad to a zesty Mexican-inspired orzo, a rich Italian tortellini, and a secret recipe my friends and family are dying for – these dishes are crowd-pleasers all year long! Find your new go-to potluck recipe!
***PRINT RECIPE WITH INSTRUCTIONS***
Italian Vinaigrette Dressing Mix -https://brinnerbites.com/recipe/italian-vinaigrette-dressing-mix/
Mediterranean Pasta Salad – https://brinnerbites.com/recipe/mediterranean-pasta-salad/
Street Corn Pasta Salad – https://brinnerbites.com/recipe/street-corn-pasta-salad/
Pesto Pasta Salad – https://brinnerbites.com/recipe/pesto-pasta-salad/
My Best Salad – https://tinyurl.com/6s75d5v2
PRODUCTS USED (This is an affiliate link)
Chipotle Paste – https://amzn.to/3TyZeer
Trader Joe’s Elote Seasoning – https://amzn.to/4ep4oDx
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Chapters:
00:00 Introduction
00:39 Mediterranean Pasta Salad
05:11 Street Corn Orzo Salad
10:58 Pesto Pasta Salad
14:00 Best Salad Ever!
the summer potluck it’s a beautiful thing right summertime friends big table filled with everybody’s best dishes but let’s be real for a second there’s that one moment of panic when you sign up for potluck what should I bring well today that panic’s over i’m going to give you four incredible and definitely not boring summer salad recipes we’ve got fresh Mediterranean vibes a zesty Mexican inspired salad a rich Italian number and then there’s the last one the fourth salad is the real reason my friends and family keep my number handy so you’re definitely going to want to stick around for that let’s get at it other than making the dressing you can put anything you want in it it can be different pastas it can be different ingredients but let’s go over the ingredients they’re right here all right i have one cup of neutral oil in this case canola oil i have a half a cup of red wine vinegar a half a cup of grated pecorino romano i have a/4 cup of my homemade good seasonings mix again you can use two packets i have an ounce of water 2 tablebspoon of dijon mustard 2 tablebspoon of capers 2 tsp of coarse black pepper and 2 tsps of Morton’s kosher salt for the pasta you can use anything you want ideally something that the dressing won’t stick to so the most common one you’ll see is fucili but that’s kind of boring to me in this case today we’re going to use aricolor cheese torillini that’ll add a little bit of extra oomph into the salad it should be fun beyond that I have 3/4 of a cup of h grape tomatoes i have a 12 oz container the small mozzarella fresh mozzarella balls about 1/4 cup of Greek pepper and chinis sliced a cup of hard salami cut into squares about 1/4 in thick 2/3 of a cup of sliced green olives and then I also have some diced provolone kind of the same size as the salami i have a 13 oz can drained of artichoke bottoms that I’ve cut into chunks and then I have about a/2 cup of red onion that’s it once we make the dressing and we cook the pasta it’s just a toss and go so super simple let’s get cooking this pasta and we’ll be right back we’re back time to make the dressing while the pasta’s cooking all you have to do is just add everything to a large enough container capers that was vinegar by the way the dressing mix the Pecarino Romano water pepper salt oil and dijon mustard starting at the bottom and pulling up [Applause] going up and down until it emulsifies [Applause] we’re back pasta’s done drained see just going to let these cool down i think I might put a little bit of extra virgin on these too if you’ve worked with this product before overcooking it is not doing it any favors it’s pretty soft so we’re going to let this cool all right all we have to do is add the ingredients so preparentinis [Music] red onion provolone artichoke bottoms haved grape tomatoes hard salami haved fresh mozzarella green olive olives i’m just going to do a preliminary toss and then we’re going to add our dressing we’re going to add about half of this dressing and then we’re going to check we might have extra but even if we do what you can do is save it because this salad is always better the next day after you allow the flavors to marry and develop i wish you could smell it it smells so good it’s really pretty too you could garnish it with parsley i could have put parsley in it it’s up to you it’s so good as I said this will be even better tomorrow for our next video we have a street corn orzo pasta made with a smoked tomato vinegrett ingredients are right here let’s go through them so for the vinegrett we’ll have a tablespoon of chipotle paste a/2 cup plus a little bit extra for garnishing of smoked tomatoes now if you haven’t seen my video on smoked tomatoes I’ll put a link in the description below basically it’s a half2 cup of the smoked tomatoes along with two extra tablespoons of the oil that I have them in then we have two tablespoons of white vinegar one tablespoon of water 1/4 cup of a neutral oil so I’m using canola here i have my homemade good seasoned seasoning i like to make my own because it doesn’t have the preservatives in it but you can use a packet of good seasons and replacement for this it will work just as well i have two tablespoons of the elote seasoning from Trader Joe’s costco also makes a really good one if you want to get it from there if you don’t have a Trader Joe’s around you three tablespoons of mayonnaise and for the finished product I have three ears of fresh corn that I roasted now you can do this two different ways you can put it on the barbecue and let them sear but if you really want to do it quick the chef’s shortcut is to put them on your gas burner rotating them don’t walk away from them because you will burn it but you can roast them rather quickly compared to the barbecue if you prefer i took the corn off the ears tossed it with another tablespoon of the Lote seasoning and allowed it to cool third of a cup of diced red onion i have a half a lemon to finish off when we’re almost done and then to top it I like to use grated kotilla you can use queso fresca that’s good as well um honestly this is feta why because that’s what I have and it’s just as good to me and then of course a pound of orzo pasta and about 2 tablespoons with a little extra for garnishing of chopped cilantro let’s get it started while the pasta is cooking let’s make our dressing so we need about a tablespoon you could add more this will add a little smokiness it’ll also add some heat but about a tablespoon of the chipotle paste i’m going to add 3/4 of the tomatoes plus all the oil and then I’m going to add my vinegar my water my seasoning my elote seasoning and my oil you can put all this together because we are going to take an immersion blender starting from the bottom and then we’re going to add our last ingredient which is our mayo i cooked the pasta to the required time to al dente which in this case was 9 minutes and while it’s hot I’m going to spread it out a little bit to cool it down not rinsing it off but I am going to add a little bit of the dressing to it just to help it from sticking and we’ll be right back all right this is still warm we’re going to add the rest of our ingredients and then we’re going to put it in the fridge and let it fully cool before we bowl it up so we’re going to add all of our corn our red onion almost all of the smoked tomatoes and almost all of the cheese again reserving a little for garnish and same with the cilantro i’m going to toss this going to add the rest of our dressing we’re going to check for salt [Music] little more salt [Music] all right need a fresh spoon [Music] much better much better all right we’re going to put this in the fridge and let it fully cool and then we’ll finish it up let’s finish up so we’re going to bowl this up now that it’s cool okay then just going to add the rest of our cheese actually what I wanted to do I should have done first is juice this lemon we’ll skip the cheese as the garnish and just stir this in give it a little extra brightness [Music] and we can pass on the cheese as a garnish some smoked tomatoes on top some chopped cilantro a little more up seasoning there we go all right here we go let’s see what we think there’s a little bit of heat it’s really nice and light h all right let’s move on to the next one our next pasta salad is a very simple but very decadent pesto pasta salad not a lot of ingredients let’s go over them real quick so we have a cup of pesto now this is my pecan pesto that I made and if you haven’t seen that video I’ll put a link up here i’ll also put a link in the description but you could just as easy use stuff from the store if you don’t have time absolutely fine i have a cup of pesto and then I have extra because sometimes depending on how your pasta is cooked that may not be sufficient so we want to have a little extra in case i have two teaspoon of kosher salt i have spicy sapada cut into little sticks probably quarter inch by quarter inch same with the equivalent of a nice Swiss cheese this is tieuk and bors head delicious both of them and then just in case we’re going to have a little extra virgin olive oil for the pasta when it comes out of the water so we are actually going to use trat truto i’m not sure if I’m pronouncing that maybe somebody could leave me a comment on the phonetics of how to say that i struggle with that but you could use any pasta that actually holds on to sauce well so we’re going to cook this right now and we’ll be back and we’re back our drained pasta and what we’re going to do is we’re going to lay this out to cool just to help it a little bit and put a little bit of olive oil once these are coated we’re just going to leave them here to cool to room temperature and before you know it we’ll be back we’re back to it all right this is cool now when we stir this we’re going to be gentle with it because like any cooked pasta if you over stir it especially with hard ingredients excuse me for my back there especially with thick ingredients you will break the pasta so we’re going to be very gentle so all we have to do is just put our ingredients in there oh and I forgot on the list of ingredients the red onion all right let’s add our one cup pesto and we’ll kind of measure from there two teaspoons of salt that’s it that’s all there is to this so now we’re going to gently toss this and depending on how well it coats we might add a little more pesto yep i think we’re going to add about another half a cup and this you can put as much in here as you like it’s not very hard at all now you could garnish this with some grated Parmesan which would be nice it’s up to you kind of like it the way it is there we have it well we got one more style to make and that’s going to be my favorite so let’s get at it all right let’s start with a pea and bacon salad really delicious little bursts of sweet peas so let’s start with that so we have a two lb bag of sweet peas that I put on paper towels and left in the refrigerator overnight you can do this on the counter if you want to expedite this but it’s pretty easy if you just do it overnight we also have a half a pound of cooked bacon crisp we have some snow peas that I removed the strings and then cut into thirds at a bias basically a half a can of sliced water chestnuts that I’ve cut into little sticks about a/3 of a cup of diced/4 in red onion 3/4 of a teaspoon of kosher salt now if you’re using diamond salt it would be a little bit less so be careful with that and then the same amount in white pepper which sounds like a lot but honestly that’s the main flavor in this salad a/3 of a cup of heavy duty mayo and 1/3 cup of sour cream that’s all there’s to it so we’re going to throw this together really fast and we’re ready to go well let’s see if I can do this without spilling peas all over the kitchen wouldn’t be the first time what I usually recommend is just roll this up it’s going to come off the ends but that’s okay it’s still on the counter you can do this carefully then we grab the rest of these the reason we do this with the paper towels is because the dressing will not stick to the peas if you don’t remove the excess water so drying them out on the outside will help the dressing clean okay we’re going to add the bacon this is super simple pee pods water chestnuts red onion i’m actually going to take this bowl back and just combine the mayonnaise the sour cream the salt and the white pepper going to whisk this up and then we add this [Music] to our salad toss it all together that’s really it if you love peas this is amazing it’s very crunchy from the bacon it’s also crisp from the water chestnuts but there’s a sweetness and a little white pepper aftertaste that’s just dynamite that’s a wrap on our incredible summer salad lineup now you’re armed with four amazing recipes to impress everyone at your next potluck and the great news is they are fantastic all year round which one are you going to try first let me know in the comments if you enjoyed this video please like and subscribe hit that notification bell so you don’t miss out on any upcoming delicious meals