With One Cheesy Addition Your Pasta Salad Will Never Be The Same

Pasta salads can be a delicious way to serve pasta and an easy dish to bring to a picnic or family lunch. There are plenty of refreshing pasta salad combinations out there, whether it's a Mediterranean pasta salad or Italian pasta salad, everyone has a favorite. Adding cheese to these salads is not a new thing, although most recipes will call for the classics like mozzarella or feta cheese. But here's a suggestion for a cheesy addition you may not have considered before: Halloumi.

Adding cut halloumi pieces to your next pasta salad will add a touch of salty and chewy texture to your dish and elevate your pasta's flavors. If you have a few minutes to spare, fry your halloumi chunks by patting them dry and crisping them up on high heat in about a tablespoon of oil. This way you'll have crispy, crouton-like pieces of halloumi, which will now add texture, as well as flavor to your pasta salad. If you're pan-frying your halloumi before adding it to your pasta, frying it right before serving will give it the crispiest texture. If you can't do this, your halloumi will still hold its shape, but it will lose some of its crunch.

Halloumi cheese will elevate your pasta salad dish for a few reasons. Firstly, halloumi has a high melting point, so if you're adding it fried to your pasta salad, you'll have perfectly cooked crispy pieces of cheese with a creamy and soft interior. Halloumi's texture will give you the ultimate firm chunks to add to your pasta salad, while melting a cheese like mozzarella or cheddar would give you, well, melted cheese.

The flavor of halloumi is salty and tangy, which will add depth to the flavors of your pasta salad, and since pasta is plain on its own, this creamy cheese will make it taste a whole lot better. Halloumi's flavor is unique as it isn't mild like bocconcini or brie cheese, but also isn't overpowering as something like gorgonzola would be – halloumi sits somewhere right in the middle, which is why it also deserves a seat in your pasta salad.

This specific cheese is also a great way to boost the protein content of your pasta salad since a 28-gram halloumi serving contains seven grams of protein. Adding extra protein to your pasta will give you all kinds of benefits, like keeping you fuller for longer and keeping your muscles healthy. So whichever pasta salad you decide to make next, add in some halloumi if you're up for some flavored and textured cheesy goodness.