How do I cook pasta for a pasta salad?

This is the one context where several standard pasta rules invert. You rinse, you slightly overcook, and you dress it in two stages. Each of those follows from the fact that the finished dish is eaten cold.

Step by step

1. Pick a shape with structure and somewhere for dressing to sit.Fusilli, farfalle, penne, orecchiette, conchiglie, radiatori. Long strands tangle into a solid mass when cold and are miserable to eat with a fork off a plate. Very small shapes disappear into the dressing.
2. Cook it slightly past al dente.A minute or so beyond the packet time. Starch retrogrades as it cools, which makes cold pasta noticeably firmer and chalkier than the same pasta hot. Pasta cooked al dente and then chilled eats hard.
3. Salt the water properly.Around 10 g per litre. This is the only chance to season the inside of the pasta, and a cold dish needs it more.
4. Rinse under cold water.Contrary to the usual rule. Rinsing stops the cooking dead and removes the surface starch that would otherwise set into glue as the pasta cools. Rinse until the pasta is cool to the touch, then drain thoroughly and let it sit in the colander for a few minutes.
5. Dress with vinaigrette while it is still slightly warm.Warm pasta absorbs oil and vinegar; cold pasta lets them slide off. Toss with a well-seasoned dressing at this stage — more acidic than you would use hot, because the pasta will soak up and mute it.
6. Add mayonnaise, if you are using it, only when cold.Same rule as potato salad: a mayonnaise dressing on warm pasta thins and separates into an oily pool. Loosen the mayonnaise with a little yoghurt, lemon juice or water before folding it through.
7. Taste and re-season just before serving.Chilled food needs more salt and more acid than warm food to taste the same. Almost every home-made pasta salad is under-seasoned, and almost every one improves with a squeeze of lemon and a pinch of salt at the last moment.

Tips

• Keep back a third of the dressing to add just before serving. Pasta absorbs dressing steadily in the fridge and a salad made in the morning will look dry by lunchtime.
• Salt watery additions — cucumber, tomato, courgette — separately and drain them, or they will water down the whole bowl within an hour.
• Roasted vegetables, olives, capers, feta, salami and anchovy all bring their own salt and acid, which is why they work so well in a cold pasta dish.
• Make it a few hours ahead rather than days. Beyond about a day the pasta texture deteriorates whatever you do.

Common mistakes

• Cooking it al dente as usual — It will be noticeably harder cold. Aim slightly softer.
• Dressing it cold with vinaigrette — It sits on the surface and pools at the bottom. Dress it warm and the pasta takes it in.
• Not rinsing — Residual surface starch sets into a paste as it cools and the salad clumps.

Questions people ask