Amish Macaroni Salad

If you like quick and easy cold pasta salads, you're just going to love the Amish Macaroni Salad. 

Perfect as a cold side dish salad for dinner or as a cold salad addition for a party or potluck.  No matter, this macaroni salad is a real crowd-pleaser.

About Amish Macaroni Salad

Have you ever been to the supermarket, seen a ready-made product and thought to yourself? I bet we can make this tastier, cheaper, and without ingredients, nobody can pronounce it?

Back in March, we had a very hectic week. I was looking for a few ready-made dishes.  And I came across an Amish Macaroni salad at the grocery store. I took a photo with my phone and decided to give this a try myself.

I don't hear a lot of people talking about this, but as a recipe blogger, I find tons of inspiration at the supermarket.

While I am by no means about buying something pre-made (ok, I had Trader Joe's Harvest chicken salad for lunch ... delish!), I prefer to make my versions of what stores serve up. Very often, I'll quickly snap a picture with my phone right in the supermarket. I use this as a recipe inspiration!

Ingredients for the Amish Marconi Salad

Salad Ingredients

• Trader Joe's Brown Rice and Quinoa Mini Elbow Pasta (I've used gluten-free Barilla elbow pasta before for other dishes and we liked it)
• hard-boiled eggs
• red onion
• celery
• red bell pepper
• green bell pepper

Dressing

• mayonnaise
• sour cream (or plain yogurt)
• sweet relish
• Dijon mustard
• sugar
• salt

How to Make Amish Macaroni Salad

Cooking the Pasta and Eggs

This macaroni salad recipe is quite simple to prepare.

Simply cook the pasta according to the package instructions. I used Trader Joe's Mini Elbow gluten-free pasta. This is brown rice and quinoa pasta and cooks in just 2-3 minutes. But you can use any elbow pasta.

No matter which pasta you use, make sure to cook it al dente. After the pasta is done boiling, be sure to drain it with cold water to stop the cooking process.

While the pasta is cooking, make two boiled eggs. Depending on how you like your eggs, boil them between 8-10 minutes. Then shock them with cold water. Allow the eggs to cool and chop them.

Preparing the vegetables

1. The different colors of bell pepper make this dish very colorful and provide a nice textural balance.
2. Cut the red pepper, orange pepper, and green pepper into halves. Remove the stem and the seeds.
3. Cut each bell pepper into bite-sized pieces. Dice half of red onion. Or you can substitute celery stalks for the red onion. When I use celery stalks in a salad, I like to chop the celery very fine.

How to make the Amish Macaroni Salad dressing

1. Begin by combining ½ cup each of mayonnaise and sour cream (you can use plain yogurt instead of sour cream) in a large bowl.  Other Macaroni salad recipes recommend Miracle Whip for this recipe, but I find that regular mayonnaise (I use the mayonnaise from Trader Joe's) works very well.
2. Add lemon juice, sugar, sweet relish, and dry mustard.  I've used dijon mustard for this recipe before and have a slight preference for it, but dry mustard works well, too. Combine well and season with sea salt

Putting it all together

1. Add the chopped-up bell peppers, onion, hard-boiled eggs, and cold pasta to the large mixing bowl and combine well.  Be sure to coat the salad well.
2. You can serve the salad right away or refrigerate it overnight if you are preparing it for a special event.  I actually think that the salad tastes even better once the dressing has fully penetrated the salad.

What to serve with the Macaroni Salad

The Amish Macaroni Salad works well with a lot of comfort food dishes. From a warming beef stew to Chicken Schnitzel, and many other comfort foods.

This salad is also perfect for picnics, parties, or potlucks.

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