How to Make Italian Pasta Salad

-Hi, I'm Miranda with Recipe.com, and today, I'm gonna show you how to make an Italian Pasta Salad. So, we have our ingredients here. We're gonna use 1 package about 2 cups of elbow or another type of macaroni cooked according to instructions and it's been drained and just kind of cooling here because this is a cooled dish so you don't wanna use like hot noodles and kind of melt the yoghurt. Speaking of which, we have 2 cups of nonfat plain yoghurt. We have a third of a cup of grated parmesan cheese. We have 1-1/2 teaspoons of Italian seasoning, 3/4 of teaspoon of garlic salt. We have 1 medium onion which has been finely chopped about 1/2 cup. We have 1/2 cup of sliced ripe olives, 2 medium tomatoes cut into 1/4-inch slices, and 1 medium zucchini also cut into 1/4-inch slices. So, what we're gonna do in this large bowl here is start by making our zesty Italian dressing. So, let's add our yoghurt in and, if essentially, you wanna get plain yoghurt, you want to make sure that you're not using like a vanilla yoghurt, obviously that would give it a super sweet taste that we're not interested in. We are-- we are being zesty today, so stay away from-- stay away from the sweet. Let's add in our parmesan cheese and then the Italian seasoning and-- and add in the garlic salt and mix, mix, mix and the last step for this is the onion, so mix this all together. Okay, look how gorgeous that looks. Now, I used a red onion because I like that when it's raw like I think of red onion kind of has like a little bit of like a sweeter, milder flavor. It's my favorite raw onion, but you can use whatever type of onion that you like. Now, let's add in the macaroni, so I'm just gonna kind of...scoop these all in and give it another toss and I haven't forgotten about our vegetables, that waits until the very end, so just keep on tossing...toss, toss, toss. Now, this is gonna be ready to eat right away, but if you don't, obviously, you just cover it and refrigerate it, and the great thing with a pasta salad like this or really anything that you're creating some sort of sauce or dressing with, the longer the flavors have to kind of marry each other and marinate, the stronger the flavor will become, and so this will be super delicious right away, but it might even be better tomorrow morning. So, if you have time to make it ahead, you certainly can. Right now, let's add in our vegetables, so this is nice. We certainly have, you know, pasta happening here and some cream, but we also have some good yummy veggies, particularly the zucchini. It's really nice, really nice addition, and in go our olives. I'm using kalamata here, but you could use whatever type you want. You could use black olives or green olives. You could do a mixture. You can just get wild and crazy with your-- with your Italian pasta salad here. Just look how pretty this is like all the nice colors, some super fresh veggies, and you are good to go. How easy was that? That's how you make Italian Pasta Salad. Thanks for watching, and for more great recipes and savings, visit us at Recipe.com.