Zucchini Pasta Salad

This easy to make pasta salad showcases the sweet flavor of roasted zucchini, complemented with fresh mozzarella, red onion and parsley. A tangy lemon and red wine vinegar dressing brings it all together. A great side for a summer barbecue!

At the start of each summer, I look forward to the arrival of deliciously sweet, in-season zucchini, and I try to find ways to put it in everything. Zucchini bread, zucchini fritters, grilled zucchini...it's good any way you make it! And, what could be better than combining zucchini with another quintessential summer dish - pasta salad!

This zucchini pasta salad keeps it simple to highlight the sweetness that comes out from roasting zucchini. The salad is tossed with a dressing of olive oil, red wine vinegar, and lemon that adds a nice zippy flavor.

The dressing is plentiful, which helps the pasta salad stay nice and moist and flavorful, even the next day. In fact, this is one of those recipes that tastes even BETTER the next day! So, if you're looking for an easy, make-ahead side for a summer barbecue, this zucchini pasta salad's got you covered!

Ingredients

Here's what you'll need to make this summery zucchini pasta salad:

• Dried pasta: any medium-sized shape will work. I used shells, but rotini, farfalle, and penne would all work well.
• Fresh mozzarella balls: I used the small "pearl" size, but you can choose a larger size if you want. Below is a comparison of the "pearl" size on the top left and the larger ciliegine "cherry size" mozzarella on the bottom right. You could also cut the ciliegine into halves or quarters if you want smaller pieces but can't find the pearl size.

• Red onion: sweet onion would be a good substitute if you don't have or don't like red onion
• Fresh parsley
• Zucchini
• Extra-virgin olive oil: I really prefer using the extra-virgin variety for the dressing because it adds such a nice peppery flavor
• Red wine vinegar
• Fresh lemon juice
• Kosher salt and black pepper

How to cut zucchini for pasta salad

So, I experimented with a couple different shapes for the zucchini. First, I tried half-moons. While it still tasted delicious, the pieces were too thin and broke apart in the salad.

So, next I tried more of a cube shape, and that worked much better! The zucchini chunks still got nice and soft after roasting. But, they held their shape much better in the salad. So, the cube shape (or chunk? large dice?) is the winner!

Cutting the zucchini into the large chunks is easy. Just quarter the zucchini lengthwise, then cut cross-wise into roughly 1 inch pieces. Here's what it looks like before and after roasting:

If you have a large zucchini, you may need to cut some of the larger chunks from the bottom part of the zucchini in half again. If you have small zucchini, you may be able to just cut it in half lengthwise once before cutting crosswise into 1 inch pieces. Most importantly, try to get your zucchini pieces all roughly the same size so they roast evenly.

I hope this pasta salad brings some summer cheer to your next barbecue! If you need a few other summer cookout sides, I've got some ideas for you. Try this recipe for Creamy Tomato Cucumber Salad, or this recipe for Cheese Pudding (it's like a savory bread pudding with lots of sharp cheddar cheese!)

If you’ve tried this recipe for Zucchini Pasta Salad, please let me know what you thought about it in the comments down below. I would love to hear from you! You can also follow me on Facebook, Instagram and Pinterest to see more Nibble and Dine recipes!

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