Bacon has plenty of delicious uses, and one of the best is in this BLT pasta salad. It’s salty, tangy, and rich, has all of the ingredients and more of a BLT sandwich, and is the BEST thanks to homemade ranch dressing and well, bacon of course.
If you are looking for delicious pasta salads, try my grandma’s classic retro picnic Macaroni Salad or my Greek Pasta Salad.
BLT Pasta Salad
The BLT might be the perfect sandwich, the perfect balance of creaminess, crispiness, and richness.
However, why stop with just a sandwich? Why not make this BLT pasta salad recipe and enjoy all of the best bits of a BLT in a convenient pasta lunch?
It might not be any healthier than the sandwich, but it is certainly just as tasty.
BLT Pasta Salad Ingredients
Don’t forget to look carefully at the recipe card at the very bottom of the page for the complete list of ingredients you need.
• Box of Farfalle pasta, cooked to al dente
• Bacon
• Romaine lettuce
• Red cherry tomatoes
• Orange or yellow tomatoes
• Cheddar cheese
• Pepper jack cheese
• Red onion
• Avocados
• Ranch dressing
• Fresh parsley
How To Make BLT Pasta Salad
• Place the cooked pasta into a large serving bowl, and mix with one cup of dressing
• Add in the cooked bacon, lettuce, both types of tomatoes, and two types of cheese, red onion, and the avocados
• Pour the remaining dressing over it and gently mix it until everything is coated
• Garnish with fresh parsley and serve
How To Cook Your Pasta Al Dente
Cooking your pasta to a perfect al dente is a key step of this recipe and is the main way to keep a good amount of mouthfeel to this salad.
However, it can be a little bit tricky to cook pasta to a perfect al dente every time, so how do you do it?
Cooking pasta to al dente can really be as simple as following the instructions on your packet of pasta and just subtracting one minute from the cooking time. This should get you reasonably close to a perfect al dente pretty often.
The only real way to get al dente pasta, however, is to test it yourself.
Take a single piece of pasta out of the water, blow on it a few times to cool it down and then give it a try. When it is perfectly al dente, it should feel like there is just a little bit of rawness in the middle, but it should be easy to bite through.
As the pasta cools, the interior will continue to cook a little bit, resulting in the perfect al dente at the end.
How Crispy Should You Cook Your Bacon?
This recipe is for a BLT pasta salad, so you’ve got to have crispy bacon. However, how crispy you cook it, and what kind of bacon you should use is entirely up to you.
Make sure you don’t cook the bacon too crispy, though – if you take it all the way to that slightly burnt, crackly crispiness, it will sort of shatter like glass when you try and bite into it.
This recipe is best when you can get identifiable chunks of tasty bacon in every bite, not shards of bacon powder.
Looking for more delicious Pasta recipes? Try these out:
• Cheesy Egg Noodles
Enjoy!
Love,
Karlynn
PIN THIS RECIPE to your SALAD RECIPES Board and Remember to FOLLOW ME ON PINTEREST!
BLT Pasta Salad
Ingredients
- one 454 gram box Farfalle pasta bow-tie pasta cooked until al dente
- 1 pound bacon diced and cooked
- 3 cups chopped romaine lettuce
- 2 cups red cherry tomatoes halved
- 1 cup orange or yellow cherry tomatoes halved
- 1 cup cheddar cheese cut into small cubes then measure
- 1 cup pepper Jack cheese cut into small cubes then measure
- 1/4 cup red onion sliced into very thin almost transparent rings
- 2 avocados pitted, peeled then diced
- 1 1/2 – 2 cups ranch dressing
- 2 tablespoons fresh parsley chopped
Instructions
- In a large serving bowl place the cooked pasta, then pour one cup of the dressing on top. Stir to coat the pasta.
- Add in the cooked bacon, romaine lettuce, two types of tomatoes, the two types of cheese, the red onion, and the avocados.
- Pour the remaining half a cup of dressing over, then gently mix until the other ingredients are slightly coated. Taste test, and add more dressing if desired.
- Garnish with the fresh parsley and serve.
Notes
- feel free to use whatever cheese you like, the pepper jack really gives this salad a peppery heat which we love
- you can use low fat Ranch dressing in this
ginger says
Love your recipes! I’m an 85 “live alone lady” but still love to cook, eat, and read/collect recipes.
Want to give you a compliment. You’re about the only “recipe guru” I read that knows that the term “pasta noodles” is really dumb! They’re two different things…..just ask Google or an Italian grandma. Even if there were no difference, the term “pasta noodles” would be redundant.
So keep the recipes coming
Ginger