Healthy Greek Pasta Salad

This Healthy Greek Pasta Salad is the perfect side dish for summer meals or can be served as a meal on its own or with grilled chicken. This light and fresh pasta salad is loaded with chickpeas, veggies, and feta cheese and tossed in a simple, flavorful Greek dressing. It’s perfect for summer BBQs, potlucks, and parties!

Greek salad – the real Greek salad, often called a village salad (horiatiki salata) is loaded with fresh, juicy tomatoes, cucumbers, olives, and salty feta cheese. It’s tossed with olive oil, lemon juice or vinegar, and oregano. Together, this simple salad makes a perfect side for a variety of meals.

This traditional Greek salad and all of its delicious flavors are exactly the inspiration for this Healthy Greek Pasta Salad. It is one of my favorite pasta salads to make since it isn’t laden with heavy mayo. It’s light and fresh and pairs well with so many dishes.

This pasta salad also gets a protein boost from chickpeas, which is perfect if you want to turn it into a vegetarian main course!

I opted to finely dice my tomatoes and cucumbers and use a small pasta shape, but you can definitely opt for a slightly larger pasta and veggie pieces too. Not too large, though, as you want to be able to easily scoop up a variety of pieces for each delicious bite.

Why we love this Healthy Greek Pasta Salad

• It’s light, fresh and delicious!
  
  
• This pasta salad is loaded with fresh, crunchy vegetables. Its a great way to enjoy seasonal produce.
  
  
• There is no heavy mayo dressing here. Olive oil, lemon juice, and oregano make a lightened up dressing.
  
  
• If you replace the feta with a vegan feta or omit it altogether, this salad can be made vegan. If you are serving it at a potluck which includes dairy-free or vegan guests, you can opt to serve crumbled feta on the side instead of in the salad itself.
  
  
• It’s perfect for potlucks, summer BBQs, and parties.

Ingredients in Healthy Greek Pasta Salad

• Pasta: Opt for smaller pasta shapes like mini shells, orzo, fusili, etc. This makes the pasta salad easier to eat and possible to enjoy a variety of ingredients in the same forkful.
  
  
• Veggies: Cherry tomatoes, cucumbers, olives (technically fruits, but it feels weird to call them that). Finely chop them so that they are easier to eat.
  
  
• Feta cheese. Choose a good quality Greek feta cheese. As mentioned above, if you want to make this vegan-friendly or dairy-free you can omit it, replace it with vegan feta, or simply serve the crumbled feta cheese on the side so guests can choose whether to add it or not.
  
  
• Olive oil: A good quality Greek extra virgin olive oil.
  
  
• Lemon juice: or wine vinegar.
  
  
• Seasoning: Dried oregano, salt and black pepper.

**Note: Ingredient quantities and full instructions are in the recipe card at the end of this post.**

How to make Greek Pasta Salad

1. Cook the pasta. Bring a pot of water to a boil and cook pasta according to package directions. Drain the pasta and run under cold water to cool down.
   
   
2. Add the veggies, cheese, and chickpeas to a salad bowl. Meanwhile, finely dice tomatoes and cucumbers. Add them to a large bowl along with the sliced olives, feta cheese, chickpeas and cooked pasta.
   
   
3. Dress the pasta salad. Whisk together the olive oil, lemon juice, oregano, salt and pepper. Drizzle the dressing over the pasta salad and toss to coat all of the ingredients evenly. Taste and adjust the seasoning to suit your taste. Refrigerate for 2 hours before serving.

Can you make this pasta salad ahead of time?

Yes, you can do most of the preparations ahead of time for this pasta salad so it is pretty much ready to serve when it is time. This makes it great for bringing along to potlucks or serving at parties.

In order to have the best results, however, you should wait to add the dressing if you are assembling it more than a day in advance. While letting the salad soak in the dressing for hours as it chills is always great, adding the dressing too far in advance will start to make things soggy if it sits too long.

If you are making the salad a day or 2 before you intend to serve it, I recommend adding the salad ingredients to the bowl as described in step 2 of the recipe and then covering the salad bowl with plastic wrap and refrigerating. You can also whisk together the dressing ingredients as described in the 3rd step and then store the dressing in a small glass jar. Then closer to serving time, add the dressing to the salad and toss it all together.

Variations

This pasta salad is delicious as it is, but can be easily customized to meet dietary needs or personal preferences. Some ideas include:

• Veggies: Adding more veggies to the salad is a fun option I like to do. Diced red onion, canned artichokes, and bell pepper are some veggies that go well in this salad.
  
  
• Gluten-free pasta. This pasta salad can easily be made gluten-free by using a gluten-free pasta.
  
  
• Protein: I opted to add chickpeas for a plant-based protein but you can certainly add any type of protein you like. Grilled chicken is an especially delicious option.

This healthy Greek pasta salad is a great side to pair with so many meals. We love whipping it up for our summer BBQs, serving alongside grilled chicken, Pork Souvlaki, or even Homemade Hamburgers. I hope you enjoy this pasta salad as much as we do!

-Cathy

Looking for more pasta salad recipes? You may also like:

Corn, Bacon and Arugula Pasta Salad
Healthy Mexican Street Corn Pasta Salad
Healthy Caesar Pasta Salad
Caprese Tortellini Pasta Salad
Mediterranean Couscous Salad