Homemade Italian Dressing on Rico’s Famous Pasta Salad | What’s For Lunch

Rico Bosco joined me in the kitchen — we’re making his famous firehouse pasta salad. This isn’t your average side dish. We talk tailgates, firehouse cooking, and why this dish only gets better the next day. If you’re looking for an easy, no-grill summer recipe that’ll feed a crowd and actually taste good — this is it.

🍋 Plus, I’ll show you how to make Italian dressing from scratch. No bottles, just flavor.

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Yo, Rico, what’s for lunch? Pasta salad. I love it. Let’s get cooking. What’s for lunch? What’s for lunch? I know he’s in the kitchen whipping something tough. What’s for lunch? What’s for lunch? Want to see what Chef Donniey’s cooking up. What’s for lunch? [Music] Guys, welcome back to What’s for Lunch. Rico Bosco. Welcome to the kitchen. Excited. We’re doing a pasta salad. Perfect for summertime. Uh you have your own recipe for this which is always nice when the guest comes prepared. I’m gonna kind of you tell me what to do. I’ll follow your lead, but is this something you make a lot of? What is this a staple? Yeah, I mean it’s very simple. You know, in the summer you don’t want to turn on the grill. It kind of originated in the firehouse sometimes like you know you turn on the ovens on a hot day like it it bakes you out. If you’re looking to bring things to a pool, uh beach club, pool club, or just kind of like lunch for the week. The thing I say all the time too, the best thing about this is the next day the fact that the Italian dressing has soaked into the pasta. You hit it with a little bit more. Um, and it’s just it’s really good. It’s light. It’s good. It’s And uh I’ve heard it referred to as pasta 5000. Okay. There’s 5,000 different ways to make it. Yep. So, walk me through. We got a red pepper. We got a green pepper. Yeah. I’m on a little bit of a health kick, so definitely the cucumber. I’ve missed that in the past. Some shredded carrots. That might be the the X factor. People go in and out on the carrots. Okay. I like carrots. I love carrots, so I’m always in on the carrots. I’m a black olive guy when I do a pasta salad, but you know, teach his own. Like you said, though, it’s like a fried rice. You throw anything in. You throw leftovers in it. You can really make it. It takes on a vessel, so you can put anything in it. Some cherry tomatoes. Baby tomatoes. Favorite. I got some mozzarella. I got pearls cuz I thought that’d be good. That’s what you want. Easy. Of a red onion. Yep. And then I got pepperoni. But now you you like the log. So I got I got it sliced. It’s the same thing. I mean, I do I like the stick because on visually like you get that, you know, that circle pepperoni. But with this, we’ll cut it into flat strips. Yeah. We’ll chop it up. And then we have two cheeses here. We have a Kobe Jack and a cheddar. Yep. So, what did you just shred the just just grate it in there? Cubes. Cubes. Cubed up. Cubed up. Um, dice the peppers, dice the onion. And then the one twist, you said Italian season or Italian dressing. We’re going to make it from scratch. So, the people at home and we’re just throwing [ __ ] into a bowl. I’m going to show people how to make an Italian dressing. Very easy to do. But that way, at least people at home, you’re learning something. The pasta is already cooked. Yeah. So, you want it cold. You want it cold. So, we got to chill this out a little bit more. But, uh, it’s cooked. You can throw it on ice. It’s kind of the same thing. Yeah. I’m going to throw it. I’m going to throw it on ice. If you want to start chopping away. Yeah, sure. Here’s a knife. All right. Try not to do a frank. Cut my Try not to. Yeah, that terrified me. Watch. Cut my finger off. Like it thin. For peppers. You want You want them diced or how do you want the You want it? I think I like dice. I like them diced for this. So, I’ll show you the easy way to do a pepper. You go around it like that. Yep. You get all this. The bottom you can actually use it. And then this the top you can save for stock. We’re going to throw it away. And then straight down. You’re going just straight across. And it kind of helps if you want to flip it over. You’ll probably get a better cut depending on how sharp your knife is. So, you’re leaving these. Are we leaving these like this or we’re cutting these anymore? You leave them whole. Yeah, you could do it whole. I would I would do this. I would do maybe a quarter. Yeah, maybe like that. That’s not a bad deal. I think that’ll bite. The bite will be better. A little. You’re right. Yeah. Stack them and cut them. That’s good. You know why? Yeah, you’re right. Because here’s the thing. When you take a scoop of it in a bite, you want almost all of it in there. We don’t want anything to be too strong. If you eat too big of a cucumber, then it overpowers it. Yeah. No, I agree. What’s your back? You’re obvious Italian obviously will not Italian. Irish married into Italian. Okay. Well, listen, if you’re around people, listen, there’s, you know, guys will clip it or whatever like you’re a you’re around enough people like they have better food. Like what’s the shortest cookbook in the world? The Irish cookbook. That’s good. That’s what they say. That’s what they say. Yeah, Irish. Nothing to eat, bro. Irish food is pretty bad. Oh yeah, the only corn beef is fine. There’s a reason they make corn beef like once a year. Yeah, it’s good on that day. Like I I have to have that sandwich at the parade, but other than that, like I’m all right, you know? Yeah. I’m trying to think what else Irish. They have like cabbage looks like wet socks out. I like cabbage. Brazed cabbage is nice, but I prefer Chinese. The Chinese do a better brace cabbage than the Irish. There’s nothing. They do like Irish stews. I hate stew. You don’t like All right. Well, all right. I think we’re good. We’re good here. We got everything sliced up. I’m gonna hit the onion. We got to get the pepperoni and We got to get the pepperoni and the onion. Stack it this way. Just kind of do strips. Favorite restaurant in uh New York. Give me three. Top three. I’ve been to Carbone four or five times. Unbelievable. Yeah. Um uh Luggers. Obviously. I’m still People say there’s better steaks than Luggers. I’ve probably had a better steak than Luggers. The thing I love about Luggers, it’s like it’s your it’s a joint, you know what I mean? The environment. wood table like old school uh guys, service guys who’ve been there forever. Waiters and stuff have been there forever. Um it’s a good it seems it’s also like a I don’t know maybe I grew up my dad on Wall Street and stuff like that. It was like a pride thing like oh go you know what I mean? It was like an established type thing. So my dad built it up the time we were going. He didn’t let us eat. I think I was like 11. He didn’t let us eat. The last meal we could have was he told us lunch on Friday. And you went on when? Saturday night. That’s my brother cracked like Saturday at like 11:00 a.m. I think we had like a 5:00 reservation at like 11:00 a.m. He was like my brother was sneaking like chips and my mother’s like, “What are you doing?” He’s like, “I got to eat.” And my my mom then got mad at my dad being like, “You can’t stall them.” That’s awesome. He’s like, “I’m telling you it’s worth it.” Can I ask the rest of that uh pepperoni? That’s great. It was worth I mean, we ate like we were getting the chair. You have to. Yeah. We’re going to put the pasta. All right. And I got to whip the dressing up. So, but that’ll be easy. Yeah. So, we’ll make a little batch here. Dressing for people that I don’t know is it’s super easy. It’s the ratio is traditionally 3:1. So, three parts oil to one part vinegar, acid, lemon juice. Uh I prefer closer to like 2:1. Some people go 1:1. Depends on how sharp you like your dressing. I think 3 to one is a little too much oil, but it’s easy to do. You get any jar, fill with oil. We’re going to do probably about that much. And then for an Italian dressing, it’s basically oil, some red wine or white white wine vinegar. I’m going to use a red cherry. So now we want that to be And the oil and vinegar don’t mix. So we can see exactly the ratio. So that’s about even right now. Okay. Yeah. It’s already starting to look that color. Yeah. So it’s about even. So I’m going to do a little bit another splash of oil. And then we just go we hit this with some dried basil, some dried parsley, crushed red pepper. I’ll let you do the honors. I like it a little spicier, but you can pick. That’s good. And here, if you want to crack some black pepper in that, a little garlic. And I like a little parmesan cheese in my in my dressing. It’s not always traditional, but I do like a you know, [ __ ] it. We’ll do a little parm. And then, yeah, we can start just to assemble this thing. I think so. Parmesan cheese goes in here. Yeah, that’s going to have a lot of flavor. Yeah, it’s going to be great. It’s going to be great. All right. I love a little fresh lemon juice. We’ll do one thing of zest. Just like two swipes and then a little bit of juice. We’ll just do like a cheek. [Music] Perfect. All right, let’s give this a try. Get it down. Lid on. Oh wow. Boom. Fresh Italian dressing. A that’s [ __ ] good. Good. Right. Yeah. Really? So that’s and fresh too. Like Yeah. And it’s easy to make and you can you can taste it’s not from a bottle. And the bottle’s so fine if you want to get it. But like it’s that you saw how easy it is to make and it’s just going to make it you know it’s going to pop a little bit more. So we’ll start going with the dressing. We might need a bigger bowl here. Rico. We’re going to need a bigger bowl. It’s the I make this mistake on the show all the time. Never have a big enough bowl to mix [ __ ] It goes everywhere. I end up doing more dishes. People like to comment about how many dishes I use. They’re like, “Oh, you use [ __ ] 10 dishes for I wash them all.” So what? It doesn’t What? It doesn’t matter. Why do you That is the That is the benefit of this, too. It’s one pot and then like again, so when you store it for the firehouse, it’s one pot that you’re going in. Okay. All right. Let’s start building this. What’s uh Yeah, it’s a little bit of I mean, it’s a little eyesight. So, one pound. I usually go two or three like if you’re making it for the week. Yep. Um but definitely start with the meat. You go heavy meat. I think you kind of go you probably want to just go all the meat to be honest with you. Okay. Um you would go I think you do like same kind of proportions depending on what you do. So like here. So it looks the cucumber looks great. The pepper all looks kind of the same. It’s all going. I love red onion. So I’m going to start hitting this with you do you definitely want to hit it with all the cheese cuz that’s a different Yep. You know that different texture in there. We got some mozzarella in here too. Yep. I like three different cheeses. You could even I mean you could probably go four or five cheeses. Sure. Again, like that’s the thing I say. The carrots, which is going to be controversial um from different people. Tomatoes. And then you keep what I do is kind of keep layering. I like onions super thin. I hope you your eye would Yeah, that works. I usually dice them, but it’s it’s the same thing, man. Like it’s it’s a variation of which way it’s going. So, I like it that it’s all kind of scoopable. And you can go this way here. I think you hit it again with the dressing. Yep. [Music] Would be what I do. You want it mixed so everything’s kind of even. Mhm. And again, the ne the next day is the best spot. I would also hit it with uh a little salt and pepper. Yep. On the top. And Italian seasoning on the top as well. Perfect. I’m going to go a little bit of this little fancy oil. What’s that? Oh, fancy one. That’s a little bit of her some herb oil. Little Italian seasoning. And then I got salt right up here. I think pepper. Pepper out here. Pepper. Pepper’s out here. I’ll hit it with that salt. Boom. We got a pasta salad here. Great for a lazy tailgate, too. Like, all right, I don’t want to pack the grill. I don’t want to [ __ ] travel with Right. portable propane this and that. I’m pretty sure it’s illegal, but uh Yeah. Yeah, I don’t know about that. You know, three Yeah, three trays of this. All right, Bosco, this is your pasta salad. I’m just I just helped assemble it. Let’s give it a try here. You can do a spoon, too. You want Yeah, you’re a spoon guy. Noodles. I have sometimes I Yeah, I like I mean, listen, I’m always going to go for it. But you get a spoon cuz then you’re getting whatever. We got a little bit of veg. That’s a great pasta salad. Truly, I mean that it’s so easy to do. It’s probably the best thing I make. And it’s like it’s really like it’s hard to [ __ ] up. It’s really hard to mess up a pasta salad. You can put anything you want in there. It’s going to taste good. And it’s just a nice easy summertime dish. Guys, that’s going to be for this episode of What’s for Lunch. Rico Bosco, thank you for being here. We’ll have you on again. See you guys next time. And please remember to subscribe to the YouTube channel. Like, comment, and subscribe. Uh, it helps us out more than you think. Thanks, guys. Peace. [Music]