This Spring Pasta Salad is packed with fresh, bright ingredients to create the perfect dish for your spring brunch or Mother’s Day. The stars of this pasta dish are the mango, mandarins and strawberries paired with the fresh vegetables and lemon honey dressing.
Spring has sprung and I am celebrating with fresh, bright salads like this Spring Pasta Salad.
Nothing screams spring like a bowl full of healthy ingredients, fresh vegetables, fruit and light lemony dressings.
I don’t know about you but I love pasta salads, and not just for picnics and summer get-togethers.
With Mother’s Day coming up this would be the perfect dish to make for your celebration.
There is no better way to celebrate the special women in your life than with a sweet, beautiful salad, a bottle of rose and a fresh bouquet of flowers.
If you like salads try this Easy Lebanese Salad, Summer Orzo Pasta Salad, Lemon Arugula Salad or this Mediterranean Bean Salad.
Recipe Ingredients You’ll Need
- Pasta: This pasta salad uses fussilli pasta. Any medium pasta works great!
- Vegetables: The vegetables in this salad are carrots and bell peppers. The crunch is a nice addition to the pasta salad.
- Fruit: You will love the sweet fruit in this pasta salad. It mixes together strawberries, mango and dried cranberries.
- Greens: Spinach is the greens in this pasta salad. You could also sub in arugula or kale.
- Seeds: Sunflower seeds add crunch to the salad.
- Fresh Herbs: The fresh herbs are the perfect finishing touch. This recipe uses fresh mint and fresh parsley. I think that fresh basil is also nice!
- Dressing: The dressing uses honey and lemon to create the perfect dressing.
Please see the recipe card below for exact ingredient amounts and instructions.
Ways to Modify this Salad
- Bulk up the salad with a protein, like grilled chicken or beans. I like white beans or chickpeas.
- Throw a handful of feta or goat cheese on the salad. Nothing beats a little creamy cheese on a pasta salad.
- Mix up the vegetables and fruit to your liking. There are a lot of options that work well in this salad from all types of berries, to melon, to zucchini.
- You can also mix add a handful of nuts, like walnuts or almonds. If dried cranberries aren’t your thing leave them out of add raisins or dried cherries.
- I also love adding an avocado to this salad. Make sure you don’t add it to the salad until you are ready to serve the salad as they tend to go bad pretty quickly
Storage Tips
Store this salad in an airtight container for up to 4 days. When you serve you might want to add more dressing and toss again. The salad can soak up the dressing once it sits.
More Salads to Try
Mediterranean
Spiralized Greek Style Salad
Vegetarian
Avocado Kale Quinoa Salad
Vegetarian
Kale Salad with Lemon Dressing
Spring Pasta Salad
Ingredients
- 8 ounces medium sized pasta, try bow tie, fussilli, or penne
- 3 carrots, chopped
- 2 cups strawberries, sliced
- 1 mango, pit removed, diced
- 2 mandarins, peeled and seperated
- 1 small bunch of greens {I used spinach but use whatever you like}, washed, trimmed, chopped
- 1 large bell pepper, diced {I used a mixture of red, yellow and orange}
- 1/2 cup sunflower seeds
- 1/2 cup dried cranberries
- zest of half the lemon
- 1/4 cup fresh parsley, chopped
- 1/4 cup fresh mint, chopped
Lemon Honey Dressing:
- 1/2 cup extra virgin olive oil
- 2 lemons, juiced {about 1/4 cup}
- 1/4 cup honey
Instructions
- Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil. Add the pasta and cook until al dente; drain, then rinse with cold water to cool.
- In a large bowl, combine pasta, carrots, strawberries, mango, mandarins, greens, bell pepper, fresh mint, parsley, sunflower seeds and the dried cranberries and stir well to combine.
- In a large mason jar or salad dressing container combine the olive oil, lemon and honey and shake or whisk until it is mixed together.
- Pour half of the dressing over the pasta salad and gently stir to combine.
- Add the parsley, mint and lemon zest stir again. Taste and adjust salt, pepper and more dressing if you like. Refrigerate until you are ready to serve.
Notes
- I like to keep the other half of the dressing to add more to the salad when I am ready to serve it. The first part of the dressing gets soaked into the salad if you refrigerate it.
- Feel free to add additional ingredients. Some ideas: grilled meats, avocado, white beans, chickpeas, feta cheese, zucchini, cauliflower, other dried fruit or nuts of your choice and other fresh herbs.
- I also like to add a poppy seed dressing to this if I don’t want to make my own.
can this salad be made the day before of the event?
Yes you can! You just might want to add the dressing the day or along with the herbs as I think the herbs are better when they are fresh.
In one dish can be carrots, strawberries, mango, lemon, greens and pasta? Are you seriously? Honestly, I can not imagine the taste of this dish …. but I want to try! 🙂 I went to cook, thanks for the interesting recipe!
It is a lot packed into one salad but I promise you will like it! This is one of those salads I make over and over again.