Put pasta in front of my husband pretty much anytime and he’s happy. Add peanut sauce? He’s in heaven!
I love a good, spicy peanut sauce mixed with pasta and lovely shredded and chopped veggies. Raw Vegan Veggie Pasta Salad becomes a wonderful cold main dish pasta or a perfect side dish to bring to a pot luck.
Use gluten free pasta if you want to keep this totally gluten free. Or, keep it completely raw by subbing ribbons of zucchini for the pasta.
Feel free to use several types and colors of pasta to make it not only delicious but pretty too! This is a super easy, super healthy recipe that will fill you with fiber and protein and all kinds of wonderful, crunchy vegetables!
Why I love this recipe:
- It’s incredibly easy to make
- You can add whatever veggies are in season
- It’s flexible. Use any type of pasta.
- It’s healthy
- It’s vegan and vegetarian
- It’s delicious!
The picture above shows another way to do it, with spinach fettuccine, grated carrots & cabbage, and lightly blanched asparagus.
Raw, Vegan, Veggie Pasta Salad
Raw, Vegan, Veggie Pasta Salad
Author: Kate Battistelli
Recipe type: Vegan, Vegetarian, Main Dish
Cuisine: American
Prep time:
Cook time:
Total time:
Serves: 8 servings
Ingredients
- 1 pound of (preferably) whole grain or gluten free pasta
- 3 carrots
- ¼ head of a small cabbage
- ½ pound of fresh asparagus
- 1 small cucumber, chopped
- 12 cherry tomatoes
- 1 head broccoli or broccolini
- 1 Bell pepper, any color
- 4 scallions, sliced
- A small handful of fresh herbs like basil, oregano, thyme, cilantro or whatever you have
- Peanut Sauce;
- ¼ cup Organic Peanut Butter or almond butter
- 2 tablespoon Tamari or shoyu sauce, low sodium preferably
- 3 tablespoon water
- 1 tablespoon Rice Wine Vinegar
- 2 tablespoons Organic Toasted Sesame Oil
- 1 teaspoon chili paste (optional)
- 1 teaspoon Dijon mustard
- Pinch of salt
- Fresh ground pepper
Instructions
- Cook your pasta according to package directions. Drain and rinse with cold water. After it’s drained sufficiently, put it in a bowl with a tablespoon or so of olive oil and stir it around to prevent it from sticking together. You can prepare the pasta hours before you assemble the salad.
- Cut the cabbage into quarters and remove the core of two of the quarters. Peel the carrots, broccoli, and asparagus. You don’t have to peel the asparagus or the broccoli, I do it because it looks prettier that way and it's not as tough.
- If you have one, set up your food processor and use the disc that has one slit for the cabbage and the disc that has lots of holes for the carrots. If you don’t have a food processor just slice your cabbage thin and grate the carrots. I like to lightly steam the asparagus and broccoli first or even throw the whole stalks into the boiling pasta water and cook for 2 minutes before the pasta goes in. Feel free to leave them raw if you like.
- Now rinse the asparagus and when it’s cool, chop into ½ inch pieces. Chop your cucumber up about the same size and thinly slice the scallions.
- Put all the veggies into the bowl with the pasta and refrigerate until you are ready to eat.
- To make the sauce, put all the ingredients in a little mini food processor or just whisk together in a bowl. The sauce can be a little dry to whisk so I dumped all the ingredients in the little mini processor and let it whirl. It’s a wet dressing, not super thick but it perfectly coats all the pasta and vegetables. Add more water, a tablespoon at a time, if it's too thick.
- When you're ready to eat, pour the dressing on the salad and toss it all together. Sprinkle the herbs on top and chopped nuts. Dig in!
Serves 6-8 as a side dish
Kate’s Tips
- Another good pasta option would be buckwheat soba noodles.
- Be creative with your ingredients. Add raw zucchini or yellow squash, olives, red onion, or celery, and any kind of nuts or seeds.
- I often make this and dress it with a simple balsamic vinaigrette or my favorite way, with homemade pesto.
- I love these pastas: Explore Cuisine Organic Pasta Variety Pack
- Feel free to use whatever type of pasta you like.
- For the Peanut Sauce, I use my favorite Peanut Butter, Gluten Free Tamari, Rice Vinegar, and Toasted Sesame Oil
- You can warm this up the next day if you’d like. I saute a couple of cloves of garlic in olive oil and add the pasta and veggies. Saute until hot and add salt and pepper. It’s glorious this way with extra Pesto!!
Fresh Blueberry Muffins