The Pasta Salad Sin Bobby Flay Doesn't Want Anyone To Commit

Celebrity chef Bobby Flay has strong opinions on cooking, and when you've made enough salads, you tend to develop strong opinions about those as well. Flay's potato salad leaves out the classic mayonnaise, and, as it happens, Flay said he often avoids pasta salads. This isn't because he hates them; he just hates the way that people tend to make them. 

In a TikTok video for Misfits Market, Flay broke down some pasta salad sins and how to best avoid them. Flay's problem with pasta salad, he explained, is when somebody overdoes it. "For some reason, when people make pasta salads, they feel like they have to put in 500 ingredients," Flay said in the TikTok video. 

And it's true, as pasta salad recipes will often tell you to add in loads of colorful veggies and different sorts of deli meats alongside various cheeses and olives. Instead, Flay said the key is to stay focused and try to stick to only a handful of flavorful ingredients that go well together. Considering pasta absorbs lots of water, it'll take on the flavor of what you're mixing with it — which is why Flay noted that pasta salad often requires more seasoning than you think.

Although Bobby Flay can get fancy with pasta salad ingredients, being an experienced chef, he does keep it rather simple. His ideal pasta salad is primarily flavored with garlic and sauteed mushrooms — specifically, lots of thinly sliced baby bella, portobello, and shiitake mushrooms and a dressing made with white wine vinegar, honey, olive oil, and oven-roasted garlic. Then he adds some green onions, fresh parsley, goat cheese, and parmesan cheese. All in all, only a handful of complementary ingredients are mixed in with the pasta. The shape he uses is fusilli, which holds onto sauce and dressing really well because of its corkscrew shape, but Flay said nearly anything besides thin noodles will work. 

There are plenty of other ways to get creative with pasta salad too, so long as you keep a narrow focus. You can easily give boring pasta salad a Mexican lift with black beans, roasted corn, and onions, or you can lean more into an Italian-style salad with black olives and roasted red bell peppers. Otherwise, in terms of ingredients you should never add to your pasta salad, try to avoid anything that you can't easily pick up with a fork and additions that will get soggy. Keeping the overall composition simple, though, should be what guides all your pasta salads.