Sunday, August 23, 2015

Chinese Chicken Pasta Salad with Sesame Dressing

It's August. It's hot. It's humid. It's time to break out a pasta salad for dinner. This recipe (courtesy of The Recipe Critic), contains so many of the Asian flavors that we love, so I decided to give it a try.

I had all of the ingredients on hand, except for the chow mein noodles. I knew what the author was intending, which was to use the cooked and crunchy noodles. Couldn't find any here, so I made my own.

This is the package I worked with:


I eyeballed about how much I would need, broke them off from the rest of the package...


...then cooked the noodles until just done.

Then I heated up some vegetable oil in a saute pan and added them into the pan in batches.

In no time at all, I had a pile of crispy, crunchy noodles.


From there, it was just a matter of combining chicken, lettuce, pre-cooked rotini pasta, cabbage, onion, carrots, and almonds. I didn't want the chow mein noodles to get soggy, so I left them as a garnish once the salad was tossed with the dressing.

And speaking of the dressing, all it takes is vegetable oil, rice vinegar, sesame oil, honey, dijon mustard, soy sauce, sesame seeds, plus a bit of salt and pepper. Whisk it all together until combined, then pour over it over the salad.

The chow mein noodles were scattered on top and we were ready to eat.

This salad has it all -- sweet, spicy, salty, crunchy, nutty. We loved it and it will make return appearances on our table year round.

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