Easy and healthy tomato and mozzarella pasta salad recipe

Salad can be boring if you don’t find one you enjoy, can’t it? My favourite salad by far is a pasta salad, more specifically a tomato and mozzarella pasta salad.

Of course, when you are trying to eat healthily that isn’t always as easy due to the dressings and mozzarella but here is a recipe for a healthy tomato and mozzarella pasta salad you can enjoy.

Easy steps to make the tomato and mozzarella pasta salad

Firstly decide if you are making the full recipe, or as described above, half the dressing recipe and set your ingredients out to be sure you have everything.

Whisk together the oil, Italian seasoning, granulated sugar, red wine vinegar, garlic, salt and pepper until thoroughly combined.

Add the diced onion to the dressing and set aside.

Cook the pasta according to packet instructions in well-salted water then strain using a colander and dunk into an ice bath to cool the pasta down quickly.

This works because otherwise the residual heat in the pasta keeps cooking it and can make it sticky.

Using a second mixing bowl add the cooled pasta shapes to this bowl and have your other ingredients chopped, if you have not done that already.

Add the mozzarella, cucumber and tomatoes to the pasta then pour over the dressing and red onion mixture.

Mix the tomato and mozzarella pasta salad together carefully using wooden spoons or salad servers.

Chill the tomato and mozzarella pasta salad in the fridge for at least 30 minutes before serving.

After 30 minutes of chilling the pasta salad will be ready to serve. If you make this recipe the night before and you are enjoying it for lunch simply leave it in the fridge until lunchtime.

It will keep well for up to 5 days in the fridge with fresh ingredients, if some of the ingredients you have used were reduced or past their best it may not last as long.

Tips to make this pasta salad on a budget

If you are on a tight budget then don’t panic this is a really easy cheap recipe to make. Here are a few changes you can make to reduce costs.

Use the cheapest mozzarella or buy it reduced and freeze it until you need it. Frozen mozzarella takes around 12 hours to defrost in the fridge, sometimes quicker for smaller packs.

Cherry tomatoes that are a bit soft as they are over-ripe work well in this recipe so if they are reduced but still good enough to eat you can use them for this recipe.

Italian seasoning is not an essential buy, if you have cheap mixed herbs these will work just fine.

Don’t worry about expensive pasta, choose pasta you like and have it in the cupboard, if you have a few ends of packets, all different shapes that is fine too!

As a cheaper alternative if you do not have kosher salt simply use table salt. The difference in taste is minimal.

Some people profess to tell the difference between cheap olive oil and more expensive olive oil. Use whatever you have and can afford.

Just Average Jen is an independent blog not connected with any weight loss plan. Please check nutritional values and/or syns yourself.

Enjoying this pasta salad on a diet

If you follow Slimming World, Weight Watchers (WW), Noom or any other weight loss plan this is a great recipe to try.

What about Slimming World?

This suitable for Slimming World tomato and mozzarella pasta salad recipe is not low in syns but it can easily be made to be lower in syns so don’t panic.

Also, remember that you have a syn allowance every day so why not use it on meals you enjoy?

The approximate syns in this recipe are calculated as follows:

• 120 ml Olive oil is 48 syns (6 syns per 15ml)
• 0.5 tsp sugar is half a syn (1tsp = 1 syn)
• 110 g Mozzarella is 8 syns (alternatively 70g is your healthy extra a choice)

The total syns for this recipe is 56.5 syns (approx) or around 14 syns per portion.

There are a number of things you can do to reduce the syns in this recipe and still enjoy it.

Use half the dressing recipe so the salad has less dressing but is only 7 syns per portion.

Use a fat-free syn free salad dressing instead to eliminate most of the syns leaving just 2 syns per portion for the mozzarella.

Enjoy the tomato and mozzarella pasta salad as a side dish and instead have half the portion at 7 syns (or 3.5 if you halve the dressing used too!) and add some other items like mini quiches, leafy salad or roasted vegetables.

More recipes you might enjoy

You might also like to check my BBQ guide and see if there are any new BBQ foods you might not have considered before like falafel burgers, pork burgers, cajun chicken and sticky chicken.

A few other recipes I think you will love are:

Bruschetta pasta salad

5 homemade salad dressings

Homemade hash browns

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