High Protein Pasta Salad
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This High Protein Pasta Salad is a must make! With 24g of protein per serving, it’s hearty, delicious and great for meal prep or a BBQ!
If you’re looking for something delicious to make this summer, try this high protein pasta salad!
This healthy pasta salad is filled with crunchy vegetables, grilled chicken, cottage cheese and the best salad dressing for all of your summer cookouts or meal prep.
Tyler’s tips for High Protein Pasta Salad
- To make it ahead: Wait to add the cottage cheese and salad dressing until you are ready to serve.
- Customize the veggies based on what you like or what is in season!
Ingredients
substitutions
Pasta: Any medium pasta should work in this recipe, but we find fusilli or rotini to be the best pasta for a pasta salad because all the ridges soak up the dressing! We haven’t tried this with gluten-free pasta or chickpea pasta, but I think it would work!
Cooked Chicken: Grilled, baked or pan seared chicken would work great in this recipe. We wouldn’t recommend rotisserie chicken because it can be greasy. We have made this recipe with our Balsamic Grilled Chicken and our BBQ Grilled Chicken Breast and both are great! If you prefer tuna, try Tuna Pasta Salad.
Veggies: Feel free to add more or less vegetables. We love the combo of red bell pepper, cucumbers, corn and cherry tomatoes! You could also probably use grape tomatoes or red onions.
Black Olives: This recipe would also taste good with kalamata olives.
Cottage Cheese: We haven’t tried substituting cottage cheese for greek yogurt, but I think it would work! We really like the texture that the cottage cheese adds. It also adds more protein!
Olive Oil: You could use avocado oil, but we really recommend extra virgin olive oil.
Red Wine Vinegar: You can substitute red wine vinegar with balsamic vinegar, but we prefer red wine vinegar.
Fresh Herbs: You can use fresh basil and parsley if you’d like instead of dried. We recommend 1 tablespoon of chopped fresh parsley and fresh basil for each 1/4 teaspoon of dried herbs.
To Make it Lower Carb: Skip the corn.
To Make it Lower Calorie: Skip the olives
To Make it Vegetarian: Skip the chicken and substitute with chickpeas.
How to Make High Protein Pasta Salad
- Mix together the olive oil, red wine vinegar, dijon mustard, and the dried spices.
- Add al dente pasta, cooked chicken, peppers, cucumbers, tomatoes, corn, black olives, and cottage cheese.
- Pour over the salad dressing and toss until evenly coated.
What to Serve with this Recipe:
This pasta salad is super hearty on its own. If you’re looking for more veggies, try our Strawberry Goat Cheese Salad or Peach Arugula Salad.
Here are some options for grilled chicken that go well in this salad:
- Balsamic Grilled Chicken and BBQ Grilled Veggies
- Perfect Grilled Chicken Thighs
- Easy Grilled Chicken Teriyaki
- Chicken marinated in our Honey Lemon Dressing
storage
Storing: This pasta salad will last in the fridge for up to 4 days. Make sure to stir it well before enjoying.
Make it ahead: If you are going to make this pasta salad ahead of time, we recommend waiting to add the cottage cheese and salad dressing until you are ready to serve.
other healthy salad recipes:
Here are some of our favorite other salad recipes
High Protein Pasta Salad
Ingredients
Pasta Salad:
- 1 pound dry fusilli pasta
- 4 cups diced cooked chicken
- 2 cups diced bell peppers
- 2 cups quartered cucumbers
- 2 cups corn
- 2 cups halved cherry tomatoes
- 1 cup halved black olives
- 1 ½ cups cottage cheese
Dressing:
- ¼ cup olive oil
- 2 tablespoons red wine vinegar
- ½ tablespoon dijon mustard
- ¼ teaspoon dried basil
- ¼ teaspoon dried parsley
- ¼ teaspoon dried oregano
- ¼ teaspoon garlic powder
- ¼ teaspoon onion powder
- ¼ teaspoon salt
- ¼ teaspoon black pepper
- ⅛ teaspoon red pepper flakes optional
Instructions
- Bring a large pot of water to boil for the pasta. Optional, but recommended: add a teaspoon of salt to the water for flavoring the pasta.
- Boil the pasta according to the package directions. We recommend cooking it al dente as the pasta will continue to absorb the dressing in the bowl and you’ll want the pasta to hold its shape once assembled. We cooked for about 3 minutes less than the recommended cook time.
- While the pasta cooks, chop the red peppers, cucumbers, cherry tomatoes and olives.
- Assemble the dressing. Mix together the olive oil, red wine vinegar, dijon mustard and the dried spices.
- Once the pasta has cooked, drain the pasta in a large colander in the sink. Run cold water over the top of the pasta so you can instantly stop the cooking process and can get it to room temperature for assembling the pasta salad.
- Take the drained pasta and pour it into an extra large serving bowl or container. (You’ll want a really big bowl, trust us!)
- Add the cooked chicken, peppers, cucumbers, tomatoes, corn and black olives. Pour the cottage cheese and salad dressing over the top of the salad and mix together until everything is evenly coated.
- Serve cold.
This is a great recipe especially for summer! I like to meal prep for the week and having this for lunch was perfect. I added more protein by using protein pasta. Will definitely put in my rotation!
Made this tonight to accompany your balsamic grilled chicken and it was excellent! I didn’t end up adding the chicken since we were having it separately, and I thought I had corn but I didn’t so I skipped that too and it was still so good! Will definitely make sure to add those items next time but figured I’d share the modifications I ended up making in case it is helpful to another reader. So much flavor – the cottage cheese is an awesome addition! Can’t wait for leftovers tomorrow 🙂