A taste of Greece: Orzo & Grilled Chicken Pasta Salad

Ingredients
16 oz orzo pasta
2-3 Grilled chicken breast 8-12oz (or rotisserie chicken breast)
1/3 cup finely minced red onion
1 ¼ cup diced cucumber
1 cup cherry tomatoes
1/4 cup freshly chopped parsley
13 Oz jar chickpeas/garbanzo beans
3 to 4 oz pitted and sliced Kalamata olives
8 oz crumbled feta cheese
2-3 Tablespoons of olive oil
1 12 fluid ounce bottle of Marzetti Simply Lemon Vinaigrette

[Music] Hey guys, welcome back to my kitchen. If you are a repeat offender, I love you. And if you’re new to this channel, then welcome. In today’s tutorial, I’m going to show you a recipe for a pasta salad, a Greek inspired pasta salad. This one is a Greek orzo and grilled chicken pasta salad, and it is perfect for summertime. So, enough talking. Let’s get cooking. Let’s start off by cooking our orzo pasta. Here on the stove, I have a large pot of water. And to that, I’m going to add salt. And no, that’s not too much salt. Then I’m going to cook the orzo pasta according to my package directions, which is um it said at 10 minutes for al dente, 12 minutes for perfectly cooked. I want to go for perfectly cooked. This is a pasta salad and you don’t want your pasta to be crunchy at all. Then you’re going to drain your orzo and add about 2 tablespoon of olive oil to the pasta to keep it from sticking, which works absolutely fine because our dressing is oilbased. Next, we’ll do some prep work where we chop up our veggies. So, here I have a cucumber. I’m going to cut that into bite-sized pieces. Now, what I show on camera is one cup, but actually off camera, I chopped up a little bit more. So, you either want a heaping cup or a cup and a/4 of cucumber. Now, I’ve finally minced some red onion. That is 1/3 of a cup. And next up, our cherry tomatoes. I have quartered mine like this because mine are larger. If your cherry tomatoes are smaller, you can have them. Now, we’ll cut up some fresh parsley. That’s one4 cup. Next, some feta cheese. I bought a whole block and I broke it up myself as opposed to buying pre-crumbled cuz I feel like pre-crumbled, they break it up too much and I like larger pieces. But, you do you and get what you want. This is 8 oz of feta. Now, we’re going to cube up some grilled chicken breast. I’m using pre- grilled that I purchase at Sam’s Club. If you can’t find pre-rilled in your local supermarket or big bulk store, you could always grill your own chicken breast or use rotisserie chicken breast. Just cube it up. I’m only using a two breast for today’s salad, but if you want more protein, obviously you can add more chicken breast. We are also adding some chickpeas as well as some colamada olives. and the star, our dressing, Marzetti simply lemon vinegrett. Now it’s time to assemble the salad. So my orzo pasta has had a chance to cool down and I’m going to add the red onion, cucumber, tomatoes, our drained jar of chickpeas, and I’m adding half of a 6.7 oz jar of pre-sliced colamada olives. That is basically a heaping/4 cup or a little less than a half a cup. Now, our cubed chicken breast and give that all a good mix. Next, we can add our chopped parsley. I like to do it in stages because I feel like it gets distributed better that way. And then we can add our feta cheese. I save this for one of the last ingredients so when we mix this up, we don’t break up the feta cheese too much. And then finally, our lemon vinegrett. I start off by adding half the bottle of the lemon vinegrett, mixing that in, and then giving it a taste. It’s better that you start off with less and then add more as you go until you find that sweet spot where it’s the perfect amount of dressing for your salad. What I love about this dressing is it is not too tart or lemony. It is just fresh and bright and delicious. In the end, I used about 3/4 of the bottle of dressing. And there you have it. A simple Greek inspired pasta salad that’s packed with protein. [Music] Thanks for sticking around to the very end of this video, guys. Please help out and support the channel by not only liking and sharing this video, but also by subscribing to the channel. And don’t forget, hit that notification bell so you don’t miss out on anything. And as always, guys, until next time. Bye.