Cheese Pasta Salad

A totally delicious and super easy cheese pasta salad recipe with orzo. Throw together this tasty pasta in just minutes - great side salad, for potlucks or for lunchboxes.

Easy Cheese Pasta Salad

Our Cheese Pasta Salad is a really simple recipe - we make it using orzo pasta because it's quicker to cook and makes the salad have a rice-y vibe!

We love this salad as a lunchbox filler and it's great to have made up in the fridge for kids to snack on.

You can add whatever veggies you like - for the basic recipe we keep the pasta salad vegetarian and just add tomatoes, cucumber, peppers, olives, cheese and a creamy lightly spicy mayonnaise dressing.

Cheese Pasta Salad Ingredients

• 1 cup orzo pasta

• pinch salt

• 200g baby plum tomatoes - quartered

• ½ cucumber - sliced into bitesized pieces

• 1 yellow pepper - diced

• ⅓ cup black olives - halved

• 2 tbs mayonnaise

• 1 teaspoon harissa paste

• 60g cheddar cheese - grated

How to make cheese pasta salad

• Cook the orzo as per the packet instructions – drain and run under cold water to cool quickly.

• Mix together the mayonnaise and harissa to a smooth dressing.

• Put all the ingredients together in a bowl and mix well to coat everything – then stir through the grated cheese.

Make cheesy pasta salad your way

We've given you the basic recipe here - but you can mix things up to suit yourself and go in different flavour directions, try....

Cheesy Bacon Pasta Salad

Keep your regular cheese pasta salad ingredients and add in some grilled bacon snipped into bitesized pieces.

Creamy Cheesy Pasta Salad

Use 1 tablespoon cream cheese mixed with your mayonnaise dressing to create and even cheesier pasta salad. We think some snipped chives go well here too.

Pasta Salad with Feta Cheese

Use the recipe above but instead of the grated cheddar add in crumbled feta - it goes great with the harissa mayonnaise and black olives.

Pasta Salad Dressing

Our salad dressing is a tasty mix of mayonnaise and harissa - but you can switch things around differently if you like - try...

• switching the mayo for creme fraiche

• skip the mayo and use pesto - try basil or sun dried tomato flavours.

• go low fat and switch the mayo for fat free yogurt

Get loads of lunch recipes and ideas here

More Pasta Salad Ideas to Make

• BLT Pasta Salad - a tasty pasta salad based on the classic BLT sandwich

• Tuna Pasta Salad - a simple, healthy tuna pasta recipe you'll just love!

• Easy Italian Pasta Salad - a big, flavoursome pasta salad packed with salami and mozzarella.

Love pasta salad? Get loads more delicious tasty pasta salad recipes here

What goes with pasta salad?

Our tasty Cheese Pasta Salad goes with loads of things! Try serving it with...

• Roast chicken or pulled ham

• Goat cheese tart

• As a potluck dish

• With grilled salmon

• Alongside hotdogs or burgers at a BBQ

We think you might just LOVE our super easy Spanish pasta salad recipe!

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