Side dishes · Pasta & grain salads

Italian pasta salad

Name: Italian pasta salad
Prep time: 20 min
Cook time: 10 min
Total time: 30 min
Yield: 8 servings
Ingredients: 450 g dry rotini pasta, cooked, cooled; 3.5 oz hard salami, diced; 1 cup mozzarella cheese, cubed; 1 1/2 cups grape tomatoes, halved; 1/2 cucumber, diced; 1 red bell peppers, diced; 1/2 cup black olives, sliced; 1/2 small red onions, thinly sliced; 1/4 cup olive oil; 2 tbsp red wine vinegar; 2 tsp Dijon mustard; 1 tsp dried oregano; 3/4 tsp salt; 1/2 tsp black pepper

The cookout fixture: rotini with salami, mozzarella, olives and crunchy vegetables in a red-wine vinaigrette. Built to sit on a buffet table and somehow improve while it does.

Time: 30 min (20 prep + 10 cook)
Servings: 8
Per serving: 410 kcal
Protein: 16 g

Both directions are legitimate — the score measures fullness per calorie, not virtue. Every version is the same dish, rebalanced.

Ingredients

450 g dry rotini pasta, cooked, cooled1062 g
3.5 oz hard salami, diced100 g
1 cup mozzarella cheese, cubed150 g
1 1/2 cups grape tomatoes, halved250 g
1/2 cucumber, diced200 g
1 red bell peppers, diced120 g
1/2 cup black olives, sliced80 g
1/2 small red onions, thinly sliced60 g

Dressing

1/4 cup olive oil60 g
2 tbsp red wine vinegar30 g
2 tsp Dijon mustard10 g
1 tsp dried oregano2 g
3/4 tsp salt4 g
1/2 tsp black pepper1 g

Every ingredient links to its food page — same data, same score, same formula.

Steps

Cook the pasta a minute past al dente — cold firms it up — then rinse briefly and let it cool.
Whisk the dressing. Toss the warm-ish pasta with half of it first; pasta absorbs dressing best before it's fully cold.
Add the salami, mozzarella and all the vegetables with the rest of the dressing and toss well.
Chill at least an hour. Taste before serving — cold mutes salt and acid, so it usually wants one more splash of vinegar.

Why this score

easy to overeat

Dense calories with little protein, volume or fiber to fill you up.

Three routes to fullness — one is enough

15% of kcal

66% water

10 g/Mcal

What pulls it down

Nothing here converges the way engineered food does — no sugar, no savoury and no alcohol penalty.

How scores work

Computed on the finished dish, not an average of the parts: 3281 kcal goes into the pot, 2129 g of ingredients comes out as ~1912 g of food → 172 kcal per 100 g. Cooking moves water, and energy density is the score's biggest lever — so we show the math. Full formula here.

Per

Calories: 172
Protein: (15%); 7 g
Fat: (39%); 7 g
Carbohydrates: (46%); 20 g
of which sugar: 1 g
Fiber: 2 g
Sodium: 339 mg

Percentages are the share of calories from each macronutrient.

Computed from the ingredients' USDA data — nothing typed by hand. Every number is traceable, every score recomputable.

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Photo: AI-generated. Nutrition and score are computed from the ingredients with the published formula — this recipe hasn't been kitchen-tested by us yet.