Easy chicken and pasta salad

Description

At a glance

Nutrition rating

Allergy/intolerance

Main Ingredient

Serves

Whip up this quick summer salad for a lunch or light dinner - easy if you've got leftover cooked pasta. And it works with all sorts of ingredients. See some of the variations you can try below.

Ingredients

1 cup small shell pasta
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 cup cooked chicken pieces, diced and skin removed (around 200g)
1 punnet (250g/8oz) cherry tomatoes, halved
1 avocado, diced
2 tablespoons (60g/2oz) chopped sun-dried tomato
1/3 cup chopped parsley
juice of 1 lemon

Methods/steps

1. Bring a large saucepan of water to the boil and cook pasta for 8 minutes, until tender. Drain and rinse under cold water. Place in a large bowl, add olive oil and toss well.

2. Add chicken, tomatoes, avocado, sun-dried tomatoes and parsley to pasta and combine. Drizzle over lemon juice. Toss lightly and serve in a bowl.

Additional Tips

Variations:

This recipe turns out well with many different ingredients - the base is the cooked pasta.

Make up salad as above. Just before serving, toss through 2 cups rocket leaves or baby spinach leaves.
Instead of parsley, use torn basil leaves. Replace sun-dried tomatoes with 2 tablespoons black olives or baby capers.
You can use 4 tablespoons of a vinaigrette dressing if you don't have the olive oil or lemon.
Replace chicken with a 200g/7 oz can of tuna in springwater, well drained or 180g/6oz cooked lean beef.

Preparation time: 10 min Cooking time: 10 min

Nutrition per serve:
One serve = 1720 kJ (410 cals), 22g fat (includes 5g saturated fat ), 32g carbohydrate (includes 7g sugars), 6g fibre, 55mg sodium. Read our nutrition rating system.