Cher's Protein-Packed Pasta Salad Is Perfect For Any Summer Cookout

You can always count on servings of mouthwatering meats at barbecues and summer grill sessions, but lighter dishes with a comparable amount of protein can often be hard to spot. That is, unless you're attending a cookout with the Goddess of Pop, Cher. Her take on a summery pasta salad loads the dish with protein and flavors that compare favorable to the umami-fest featured at many cookouts, giving folks an alternative if they're not feeling burgers or chicken drummies, but don't want to sacrifice the protein.

Cher's dish is really a hybrid, consisting of pasta salad and tuna salad. The process begins with cooking small-shell pasta, making sure it's a perfect al dente texture, because one of the ingredients you never want in pasta salad is undercooked noodles. Tomatoes are then blanched, peeled, and diced before preparing the main attraction — tuna.

Do yourself a favor and get canned tuna that's packed with extra flavor via vegetable broth, drain it, and mix it with your favorite mayonnaise. Now for the goodies: Add sliced and drained black olives, celery diced into small chunks, fresh dill, and parsley. Season with salt, pepper, and Beau Monde seasoning, mix everything together, and let the dish chill in the fridge so all those flavors get to know each other.

An average cheeseburger contains roughly 17 grams of protein, and Cher's pasta salad can get you reasonably close to that mark. Her recipe calls for 12 ounces of tuna, which, if you buy StarKist Chunk Light Tuna, has just under 50 grams of protein. Given that the dish is meant to feed four to six people, you're getting somewhere close to 12 grams of protein per serving if you have a generous amount.

Cher's pasta salad recipe doesn't seem like anything out of the ordinary until it's time to incorporate Beau Monde seasoning. That's because the product, made by the Spice Islands brand, may not be familiar to some people. It's a versatile blend of simple spices that's long been used to enhance everything from burgers to Spanish rice, and contains only five ingredients: celery seed, onion, salt, dextrose, and silicon dioxide (a food additive that keeps dry ingredients from forming clumps). Beau Monde is hailed for its ability to add a little sweetness to savory dishes (via the dextrose), and Cher's protein-packed tuna/pasta salad combination is a terrific way to experience that for yourself if you've never tasted it.

Just like any recipe you come across, Cher's pasta salad can be tweaked to fit your tastes. If Beau Monde seasoning isn't for you, or you have trouble finding it, a few dashes of celery seeds and dehydrated onions would be a close approximation of the traditional recipe. You could also give the dish a richer flavor by using a mayo that was born to level up tuna salad — Kewpie mayo. If you really want to impress, peeling the celery is a trick that some argue makes the veg less bitter and stringy. Make it your own and become the icon known for bringing something light yet substantial to a typically heavy summer cookout.