Hello, and welcome to Savor production of iHeartRadio. I'm Annie and I'm Lauren vocal Bam, and today we have an episode for you about pasta salad and macaroni salad as a subunit of that.
Yes, oh my, oh well, was there any reason this was on your mind?
Lauren?
Oh, we are in the kind of summertime picnic cookout season. I almost said era, but sure, that's a word as well above the year era of the year, and macaroni salad is a very American pot luck summertime dish. I personally don't like it at all. I'm not a fan. We have found the one episode where I wasn't hungry the entire time that I was reading about something.
This cracks me up too, because just in time for your birthday. I'm glad we chose a topic. Maybe this says something about you.
I'm not sure that you don't like. I meant to record it like last week instead of this week, but things happened and I did reward myself with our spoiler alert. Our next episode topic after this one is a giant tiger prons and I'm so excited to talk about shrimp. So it's all gonna work out. It'll yeah, it'll all work out. It just kind of makes me laugh.
Yeah, I've got no real strong opinion about pasa salad. I mean, probably anyone who listens to the show knows I go for the vinegary ones and not the male ones.
Yeah, you famously dislike Mayo.
Yes, famously. But it's also dependent on what else is available. The pot lucking question whether or not I'll go for the apasta sALS like, it's usually not my.
First choice if there's a lot of other sides. But there's a lot of factors that come into play whether or not I'll eat apasta Sal's basically what I'm saying, But I do. I did enjoy reading about how.
Many different pasta salads there are, all the things people have done.
And it's goodness.
Yeah, I don't think I had really thought about the iterations and now you can't. Now I can't done think Yeah, oh no.
And because I researched this, now I'm getting all these like here are some recipes, and I learn even more iterations. Oh okay, So that being said, you can see our past pasta episodes. You can also see Potato salad and mac and Cheese maybe even aspects.
Sure, salad salad in general.
Sure, our episodes from Hawaii, I think we talk about Hawaiian and my macaroni.
Salad briefly Mayo ranch.
Yeah, but honestly the point being a lot can go into a pasta salad.
Yeah right, yeah yeah. Also related definitely Coleslaw and our Pasta Shapes episode.
Yeah yeah yeah.
Oh well, okay, I guess that does bring us to our question.
Pasta salad? What is it? Well, pasta and or macaroni salads can be a lot of things, as is frequently the case with salads, but what you are basically looking at is a savory mixture of cooked white wheat pasta, usually in bite sized pieces, plus additions like chopped vegetables, pickles, meat or cheese, seasoned with salt and pepper, and herbs and spices of your choice, all tossed in some kind of fatty dressing that'll help the flavors and physical ingredients
cohese form of cohesion, yeah, come together. Yes, perhaps obviously. If it's a macaroni salad, the pasta used will specifically be elbow macaroni, which is a type of small diameter, short cut tube pasta that has a slight bend to the tube, rather like an elbow. This shape, as with many of the shapes used for pasta salads, has a lot of surface area that can kind of glom up
the dressing and the seasonings. These salads are served chilled or room temperature as a side dish, often during hot summer weather when you'd want something cool, often at a picnic or cookout sort of situation where people are bringing dishes for a large group. But it can just be like a nice side for a lunch plate or a sandwich.
A pasta salad is a vehicle for like cool vegetable flavors and smooth texture with a bit of pleasant shoe and sometimes crunch, and it's filling without feeling too heavy. Hopefully it's like it's like sitting dockside or pool side on a bright day in the cool shade, or at least I imagine if you enjoy pasta salads, that's what it would be like.
I was about to say, I appreciate how much effort you're going to hide your derision, isn't it is? It's the temperature you don't like, correct, It's.
The texture that you usually get from I just I don't want my pasta to be cold. I don't understand why. I don't understand why you're making pasta and then it's not warm. And I can in vision a pasta salad
that I would enjoy. And I've thought a lot about this over the past few days of doing reading okay good, I think I think if it was like an orzo, like a very small pasta, because I don't mind cool like like couscous type dishes, yea, So so I can envision like a like a like a olive oil based orzo pasta salad with like nice bright herbs, I don't know, maybe some cheese or tomato or something in there. I can envision somewhere out there there's a pasta salad for you.
It's just not mayo based macaroni salad. I don't think that's okay, but but okay, So beyond beyond the two of us, In places where pasta salad is popular and or traditional, there are opinions about the right or wraw or best or worst ways to make a pasta salad. And those places are mostly areas where like Italian pasta making traditions have interacted with Eastern to Southern European mixed salad making traditions. Of course, food is a globalized phenomenon.
You get lots of pockets and rifts in there, but okay. Dressings for pasta salad come in two basic categories, under which there are many iterations, so creamy versus non creamy. The creaminess can come from mayo or mao substitutes which contain no dairy and or something dairy based like sour cream or like a caesar or ranch dressing. The non creamy versions will be oil based, sometimes a neutral oil, but sometimes a flavorful one like a peanut or sesame
oil or blend. There are schools of thought about whether a tangy ingredient should be added to the dressing, like a vinegar or a lemon juice, or even whether a tangy based like miracle whip or sour cream are appropriate. There are schools of thought about whether sweet elements are appropriate in the dressing, like a ketchup or maybe just sugar. Whatever your choices. People will play off of those dressings
with all kinds of different seasonings. Fresh herbs like basil, thyme, mint or cilantro, fresh air, dried hot peppers, citrus, zest, minced garlic or chives, maybe some mustard, grated parmesan or cottilla, cheese,
sesame seeds, hot sauce. I don't know. There are strong opinions out there about every possible ingredient you could add, and what the texture should be like, like should the ingredients match the texture of the pasta like tender and or chewy or should they be crunchy related should fresh vegetables be raw or blanched or cooked? For those vegetables, you might have carrots, celery, sweet peppers, cucumber, broccoli, peas, corn, tomatoes, onions.
A lot of recipes will add a pickled or brined element, like whatever of pickled cucumber or peppers, or olives or capers. A protein element might include something like a crumbled bacon or sausage, maybe some chopped salami, boiled shrimp, smoked fish, chunks of a fresh cheese like feta or mozzarella, chopped hard boiled egg, maybe some crunchy pine nuts or walnuts.
I mean, at a certain point here, I'm just listing foods, you know, Like it's a salad, like you can put whatever you want in it and be aware that someone will probably argue about whether it belongs there.
Indeed, the salad is your oyster. But you know that you could go too far.
You can fly too close to the salad sun. Absolutely. People do also have preferences about the types of pasta that you use. You know that elbow macaroni versus a bowtie versus shells or rotini or orzo or ramen or tortalini. I don't know. Also, is that pasta white or it doesn't need to be dyed other colors?
I don't know.
I can't tell you, wouldn't dare no. What I can give you, though, is a science tip. So okay, if you're making a pasta salad, you do not want to cook your pasta al dente because you're not serving it hot. Aldenti. Pasta served hot has a lovely bit of chew to it, like that's the point. And it has that texture because you've cooked it just so. The starches and the pasta to latinize and go all woobly and tender and chewy.
But when starch is cool, they realign themselves into a crystalline structure that's stiff and pushes water out like this is the reason that bread goes stale over time, and it's called retrogradation. So when you're making pasta salad, you have to for that. That means that you cook your pasta a couple of minutes longer than you normally would, let it go softer, and then as it cools, it'll
retrograde back to the firmness that you're looking for. Also, since this is a dish that's going to sit at least until it cools to room temperature or colder, definitely give it a taste before serving and adjust the seasoning is necessary.
I love this pasta salad science tips. You've got to know whoa what about The nutrition.
Really really depends, you know, hydrate Yep, yep, that's rue sah, that's eat a vegetable that's not in a pasta salad.
Yeah, well, we do have some numbers for you.
We do. Okay, So humans enjoy pasta in general. As of twenty twenty two, we were producing about seventeen million tons of it a year. Wow, which is a number that I don't have a good concept of. It's a bunch. A you Gov poll conducted in twenty twenty five showed that Americans enjoy a macaroni salad. Ninety six percent of US are familiar with it and sixty three percent of us like it, So I'm in the minority. That's fine.
And they found that the UK has similar feelings about pasta salad about ninety eight percent are familiar sixty one percent like it. Interesting though, I think the American question might have specifically been about a creamy like mayo dressing salad, and the UK question was specifically about a non creamy pasta salad.
I think we had a listener write in about that about potato salad.
Yeah, question, Yeah.
Well, listener's right in.
Yeah, yeah.
I will say it's popular enough in the United States that Ted Ed did an animated short talking about like molecules and different types of mixtures, you know, like solutions versus suspensions, and they were using macaroni salad as their like main metaphor or possibly similarly. I didn't watch the video. I don't know. It's interesting to me because pasta salad, I know, make some people angry When I say this,
it feels like such an afterthought to me. Oh, like, it's like the thing that's there, but it's not what you're there. It's not what you're there for, right, But I know there are some people who would disagree with me heartily. Oh absolutely. I will get into some of that in the history section, but first we are going to get into a quick break for a word from our sponsors, and we're back. Thank you sponsor, Yes, thank you. Okay.
So the origins of pasta slash macaroni salad, they are a bit of a tooss up.
See what I did there? Oh hey heyah finger guns? Yeah all right, so yeah, you can see our Shapes of Pasta episode for more about this. But historians really love arguing about who invented pasta and when and based on what cultural influences. But whatever the case, it seems to have existed around the Italian peninsula by the eleven hundreds or so, and perhaps concentrated in like southern Italy
and Sicily. Other confusion fun with etymology. So in American English, when you say macaroni, you almost certainly mean elbow macaroni as defined above, But in Italian and perhaps especially historically, the macaroni can be used to describe any type of pasta that is made from hard wheat flour dough and then dried and like sold dry, So that's that's cool.
Extrusion methods to produce different three dimensional pasta shapes, like tube shapes, were invented sometime around the sixteen hundreds, and the Industrial Revolution made grain processing and pasta making more efficient, and so dried pastas were common around Italy for everyday people by like the late seventeen hundreds. Mm, that is very brief. That is a very brief summer, is it.
We're both like holding up our hands. Yes, we understand the whole history there, but for the macaroni salad, it is believed to be an American innovation that took place so time in the early nineteen hundreds.
Yeah, so like waves of Italian immigrants had brought over dried pastas and like the technological know how to make them starting in the early eighteen hundreds, American recipes for pasta or being printed by like the eighteen twenties. We had a pasta manufacturers association by nineteen oh four, so right, so it was becoming a common product.
Rites and media outlets were publishing recipes for macaroni salads by nineteen fourteen. Okay, so now while we don't know for sure the history, there are some prevailing theories. One is that pasta salad is a melding of a lot of cultures that perhaps came together based on available ingredients in different communities interacting with each other. In the US, the pasta from Italy the tradition of mayo based dressings
from Germany, kind of like potato salad. In fact, sometime around the nineteen thirties, pasta salad was touted as a cheap version of potato salad in some places. In the ensuing decades, pasta salad was a popular side dish at delis. In nineteen thirty seven, Crafts Macaroni and Cheese debuted, which isn't macaroni salad, but I'm sure led to a lot more people getting familiar with this type of pasta. A lot of these early pasta salad recipes were typically molded
and served chilled. Generally, a macaroni salad was dressed with mayo, and a pasta salad was dressed with vinegarrette. And a lot of what it came down to was what do you got in your pantry. What's a cheap filling dish that I can make with what I have?
Use some stuff up, let's go exactly Worth pointing out, though, that some researchers believe that the pasta salad is rooted in Italian Jewish cuisine. Yeah, so, in traditional Jewish culture, you don't cook from sundown to sundown on the weekly Sabbath because cooking is work, and work is prohibited, you know, supposed to be a day of reflection and rest. But
as checkers will point out, you got to eat. So dishes that can be pre made and are in are good, you know, like cold to room temperature are an entire thing. And there have been Jewish communities in Italy since before there was pasta in Italy, Like like dried pastas have been part of Silian Jewish cuisine since the fourteen hundreds. They were picking it up earlier than a lot of
other pockets of Italian culture. So it would make sense if pasta salads happened there centuries before they happened here, though direct evidence is kind of scant, Like, there are definitely recipes from the nineteen hundreds that are now traditional for like cool to room temperature pasta dishes, though they tend to be more saucy and like less salady. Think of some kind of pasta and like a tartan spicy tomato sauce, or or maybe like a cooked down garlic
and anchovy and olive oil dressing kind of situation. There's some Orthodox Jewish communities in the States have definitely picked up like American style pasta salads. I love this. It's such a mess of trying to figure out where any of this came from. Yeah, yeah, it helps that you know, mayo doesn't have dairy in it, and so you're not gonna you're not gonna mix milk and meat, which is another prohibition in a single meal by eating a mayo based salad.
Yeah, it's fascinating listeners. I'm really hoping you all write in.
Okay.
So kind of going off of that, there were a lot of regional varieties that came up over the years of pasta salads and macroni salad, which does bring us to the Hawaiian macaroni salad aside, which again this is very brief and could be its covering. Yes, so a
quick description upfront. Hawaiian versions of mac salad modernly are usually ma based dressing with grated onion, other graded or shredded ingredients like carrot, cabbage, and or hard boiled egg seasoned simply with salt, pepper, and a bit of sugar,
and it served as a side with plate lunches. Yes, some theories behind how the Hawaiian version came to be revolve around European and American lead hotels that were housed with European and American lead shifts opening in Hawaii around this time, which explains the foreign ingredients of pasta and mayo. Another piece may be European and mainland US plantation owners
who relied on local Asian chefs and producers. So all these things, but outside of the hotel scene, this max salad was a cheap, filling dish that could sustain workers doing grueling manual labor. It was customizable. It balanced out a lot of the salty, sweet heaviness of frequently tinned sauced meats and rice that these laborers would enjoy. It does provide a nice we had some Oh yeah, yeah, it cuts through some acidity and saltiness.
It's really great. Yeah.
According to one article I read about it, potatoes dipped in homemade mayo. The jarred stuff at the store was too expensive, so homemade mayo and show you once was a popular snack in Hawaii, and it wasn't hard to
make the jump to macaroni salad from there. Some of the folks interviewed for this piece said that they had heard stories of pushcart vendors working along Honolulu's waterfront selling two scoops of rice, a choice of protein or stew, and a scoop of mac salad by the nineteen twenties and thirties, which is very much like.
The plate lunch. Yep, yep, that's it. So again, very brief, but we'll put that on the bookmark to do read. I returned to Yeah.
Nineteen sixties articles from the New York Times included several recipes for pasta salads. In the nineteen eighties, the number of pasta salad recipes grew exponentially in the United States, coinciding with the larger availability of more pasta shapes, sizes, and even colors, as part of the growing affinity in the United States for novelle French cuisine. That isn't to say the cheaper nostalgic versions went away.
The field just expanded. Yeah yeah. In this version of nouvelle cuisine, fancy chefs were playing with ingredients and presentation and in a move away from like the stuffy, heavy, complex cuisine which had been the fashion for decades. This like nineteen seventies to eighties version of nouvelle cuisine was focused on making the most of fresh ingredients and it
was playful, like rethinking traditional dishes for a pertinent to today. Example, in the early eighties, this Italian chef of Gualtierro Marchesi did a pasta salad that was long spaghetti dressed with olive oil, salt and shives, topped with caviar and maybe a pinch of minced shallat, served slightly chilled. And that's a very posh example. Okay, but like, yeah, like this this was a time when Americans discovered olive oil. Uh. And also we're realizing that, like everything doesn't have to
be drenched in mayo all the time. There's other options. Yeah, so right, we got some more varieties here, Yes, And I think my mom makes one that probably was influenced by that. It's like angel hair and olives and tomatoes and capers and it's just all oil lovely.
Yeah, so nice, it's nice, it's nice.
She also makes a ramen one which I've talked about before. Yeah really, okay, sometime around here I couldn't find an exact date, but sometime around here, American companies started selling boxed pasta salad kits and stores, and pre made pasta salads at grocery stores as well.
I love.
I have witnessed these. My mom had, she made some. I love how they're called. It is like suddenly surprised. They have a name that makes it sound like the pasta salad is attacking.
You or something.
But if you've seen like these box salad kits, you've probably seen this one.
Uh, simply surprised. I think that's what it is.
But you just like, get your cook the pasta, put in your ranch probably ranch esque dressing in there, and then that's at whatever you want, and that's it. Pasta salad still available. I checked at my store.
There you go, yeah, yeah, yeah. I now I'm a little bit determined. Now I'm like, Okay, maybe maybe I'll turn myself around on pasta salad. Maybe I will figure out maybe I just don't like it. Maybe I just don't like it, and that's fine too, But I'm going to try. I'm going to make a concerted effort, an honest yeah.
Try.
I did find a list of somebody rated like the top pasta salads you could get at the store, and I think the number one was an orzo salad.
So I think there's hope for you. People certainly are doing. I couldn't find a lot of more recent numbers than this, but people are certainly trying all kinds of things with pasta salad right now. So if you are interested, it is out there for you.
Oh my goodness. Yeah, the Internet would love to serve you a list of twenty nine creative pasta salad takes. It would love it so much, It very much would.
And to be honest, I don't know about Lauren, but I would love for you listeners to send in your pasta salad recipe.
Yes, oh absolutely, yeah. Yeah, But that's what we have to say about pasta salads for now. It is. We do already have some listener mail for you, though, and we are going to get into that as soon as we get back from one more quick break for a word from our sponsors. And we're back. Thank you, sponsor, Yes,
thank you, And we're back with this. That's what's going on there, because I feel like the pasta salad does a vocal lot of questions, some of them good, some of them bad, and sometimes apparently you are suddenly surprised by apasta salad coming together. So yeah, yeah, yeah, if that.
The whole brand is basically about being like whoa came together? Okay, so we've gotten a lot of delightful listener mail about violets and pictures related to violets.
Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, that's great. Yes, growing and some of your lawns. So that's been wonderful. Keep that up. So first we have Randall wrote, I just finished listening to your Violet episode. Our property came with a half acre lawn which I am turning into a meadow, mostly by not mowing areas. To our joy, a big section is all violets, and in the spring it is a
carpet of purple. Sadly, I have not been able to get a good photo of it, so I am attaching a photo of our two dogs, Maple the retriever and Martin, the poodle. I am now looking for slightly recipes. Seems mostly salads and cooked greens. M yep, yep ye that is what I found as well. Cocktail Yeah sure sure, but yeah, thank you. Uh for a pet photo as
always it is. It's really sweet, uh, Martin, the poodle appears very majestic, if slightly distracted and or confused, which I think is a pretty good description of most poodles. And uh, and Maple, which is a great name for a retriever, is doing the uh, the very serious I am a hunting dog and I am behind grass and you cannot see me kind of pose, which is very sweet. Yes, it's very adorable. And this meadow in the background, it
looks beautiful. Oh yeah, yeah yeah. And kill your lawn that's great.
Yeah, absolutely, mm hmmmm mmmm.
Garrett wrote, I really enjoyed your Sezon episode as I am a craft beer enthusiast, home brewer and former craft brewery sales representative. Like the commonly repeated but now debunked IPA origin story, many a time have I heard the tales of farmers using leftovers and brewing these beers for seasonal farm hands, and probably have assisted in spreading this misinformation.
Shame on me. When I got into home brewing, I did not have ways to control my fermentation temperatures, and I was drawn to the allure of throwing whatever you want in the mix. As these style guidelines accepted in the US are broad. It was the first of my beers that people ever asked for second servings of, and over a couple years I developed a Jalipano Seyson that became a favorite among friends, and eventually was commissioned to brew batch for a wedding which had a taco bar.
Talk about a perfect pairing. I sold beer as a supplier rep for a small craft brewery in Virginia for a few years, and one of our core offerings has been a Seeson since the early days of operation. It has won t UK to Great American Beer Festival awards
and is quite popular with fans of the style. As I began to work with beer buyers at restaurants, I quickly found out Seyson has a bad reputation for not selling well in our home area, and many people mockingly referred to the style as stays on, as in it stays in tap for way too long, taking up line space where better selling beers could shine. This changed once I crossed the border to sell beer in Washington, d C,
which has a vibrant restaurant and foody scene. Almost to a person, chefs and buyers preferred the season over our other options, where in Virginia it was the opposite, with West Coast Style IPA being the top dog. It speaks to the point you made in your episode about Seyson being a great food pairing option. We tended to recommend it for places with seafood or complex cheeses on their menus. In closing, I urged you and your listeners to support Seyson.
It's a great style that has a wide range, and it's really fun to play with finding your favorite pairings. Cheers and thanks for all your amazing episodes to keep me informed, entertained, and craving almost anything you talk about.
Check and check yes Saison's and finding my favorite pairing with it.
Yeah, Oh I am I Yeah, I like I like that. That week I went out and was like, okay, let's find let's find some good ones. Yes, I'm pretty determined to do like a cheese pairing. Okay, yeah, yeah, I'm I'm bad at I'm bad at like drink pairings. But but my cheese plate game is only increasing, my power is only growing. My knee jerk reaction is nervousness at that. But you're gonna get.
Too much cheese power, Lauren, it's gonna go to your head.
But I do love a cheese plate, so I also what do I do here? Yeah? But yeah, but but but think thank you? Oh and I and I love it is I get so I get kind of anxious about our beer episodes because home like like home brewers and craft brewers are so passionate about what they do. And I mean, I never want to pick anyone off. That's not what I'm here for. But I'm like, oh,
I don't want to disappoint you. So so every every time we hear back from someone that level of knowledge and passion that they actually like to beer episode, I'm like, think the kech that's really nice. That's really good to hear. Thank you, absolutely, and it's so cool to hear these differences that you saw. Yeah, areas also hearing about your jalapino brew.
Yeah, taco bar.
That sounds depicious.
But we always love hearing from you listeners who have this on the ground experience, oh yeah, as opposed to our kind of research we're both making like typing, yeah, like like academic and scare quotes kind of kind of experience of things. Yes, So we really appreciate it yeah, anyone who takes the time to write in, thank you, Oh yes, yes, yes, and thanks to both of these listeners for writing in. If you would like to write to us, you can. Our email is hello at savorpod dot com.
We're also on social media. You can find us on Blue Sky and Instagram at saver pod and we do hope to hear from you. Savor is production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, you can visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. Thanks as always to our super producers Dylan Fagan and Andrew Howard. Thanks to you for listening, and we hope that lots more good things are coming your way.