Looking for an easy dinner that doesn’t heat up the kitchen? This easy taco pasta salad recipe makes a tasty one-dish meal that combines pasta, seasoned meat, fresh veggies and cheese into one hearty meal that’s perfect for busy summer nights, potlucks and quick family dinners.
This easy taco pasta salad recipe is one of my favorite summertime meals. When the weather gets hot, the last thing most of us want to do is spend hours cooking in the kitchen. It’s a nice change from hot meals, filling enough to serve as dinner all by itself, and made with simple ingredients you probably already have on hand.
This is one of those recipes that’s easy to adapt to whatever you have in the fridge. Have leftover taco meat from taco night? Toss it in. Have some rotisserie chicken that needs to be used up? That works too. You can add extra vegetables, use whatever cheese you have in the fridge, and adjust the dressing to suit your family’s tastes. It’s an easy way to turn odds and ends into a meal everyone will actually eat.
This taco pasta salad is perfect for busy weeknights because you can make it ahead of time and keep it chilling in the refrigerator until dinner. It’s also great for potlucks, picnics, church gatherings, and family reunions because it travels well and feeds a crowd without costing a fortune.
For this week’s meal plan, we’re keeping things simple. Serve the taco pasta salad with warm cornbread and a tray of carrot, celery, and bell pepper sticks for an easy, colorful meal. Then finish dinner with our creamy No-Bake Cheesecake Dip served with fresh fruit, cookies, or cake cubes for a dessert that feels special but takes just a few minutes to make.
If you’re looking for an easy dinner that doesn’t heat up the kitchen and helps stretch your grocery budget, this taco pasta salad recipe is a great one to add to your summer meal lineup.
PrintEasy Taco Pasta Salad Recipe
This easy taco pasta salad recipe makes an easy one dish meal! Cool pasta with Mexican themed ingredients and finished with a tasty sweet dressing, it’s a perfect summertime family dinner recipe! It’s a great way to use leftover meat and veggies, too!
Ingredients
6 Tbsp. water
1/2 packet taco seasoning
1/2 lb. cooked hamburger or 1 cup cooked chicken, shredded
8 oz. rotini pasta (or your favorite pasta shape), cooked, drained and rinsed
1/2 cup green bell pepper, chopped
1/2 cup onion, chopped
1 tomato, chopped
1 (2.25 oz.) can sliced black olives, drained
8 oz. shredded Colby Jack cheese (or your favorite cheese)
1 (8 oz.) bottle Catalina dressing or red French dressing*
Instructions
- In a medium skillet, combine the water and taco seasoning. Bring to a simmer.
- Add the cooked meat and cook for 5-10 minutes, stirring occasionally, until most of the liquid has evaporated. Remove from the heat and let cool.
- In a large bowl, combine the cooled pasta, seasoned meat, green pepper, onion, tomato, olives and cheese.
- Pour the dressing over the salad and toss until everything is evenly coated.
- Cover and refrigerate for at least 1 hour before serving to allow the flavors to blend.
- Stir before serving and add additional dressing if desired.
Notes
- Rotisserie chicken works great in this recipe.
- This salad is easy to customize with ingredients you already have on hand. Try adding corn, black beans, avocado, jalapeños, or chopped lettuce just before serving.
- If you prefer a lighter salad, start with about 6 oz. of dressing and add more to taste.
- Leftovers can be stored in the refrigerator for up to 3 days.
*The pasta will absorb some of the dressing as it chills, so the full bottle isn’t as much as it may seem. Add the dressing gradually if you prefer a less heavily dressed salad.
Taco Pasta Salad Recipe Meal Plan:
Taco Pasta Salad
Cornbread
Carrot, celery, and bell pepper sticks
No-Bake Cheesecake Dip
No-Bake Cheesecake Dip
This creamy, fluffy no-bake cheesecake dessert dip comes together in just minutes with four simple ingredients! Serve it with fresh fruit, pound cake, angel food cake, cookies, or graham crackers for an easy dessert that’s perfect for parties, holidays, or a quick family treat.
Ingredients
1 (3 oz.) package instant pudding mix, any flavor*
1 1/2 cups milk
1 cup sour cream
1 (8 oz.) container whipped topping, thawed
Instructions
- In a large bowl, whisk together the pudding mix and milk until smooth and slightly thickened.
- Stir in the sour cream until fully combined.
- Gently fold in the whipped topping until no streaks remain.
- Cover and refrigerate for at least 5 hours, or overnight, to allow the flavors to blend and the mixture to set.
Notes
Serving Suggestions
Serve as a dip with:
- Fresh strawberries, grapes, pineapple, or apple slices
- Angel food cake cubes
- Pound cake cubes
- Vanilla wafers
- Graham crackers
- Pretzels for a sweet-and-salty treat
Notes
- Vanilla, cheesecake, white chocolate, banana cream, and chocolate pudding all work well in this recipe.
- For an extra-rich dessert, use full-fat sour cream.
- Store leftovers covered in the refrigerator for up to 3 days.
*You can substitute cooked pudding if desired. Prepare according to package directions and allow it to cool completely before mixing with the sour cream and whipped topping.
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Easy Kitchen Tips:
- When making cornbread, I grease a cast iron skillet with bacon grease. Then, I heat it in an oven at 400° until it is really hot. It should sizzle when a couple of drops of water are dropped into it. Watch it carefully until it is ready. Then, I pour the cornbread batter into it, adjust the oven temperature to what is called for by the recipe directions and continue baking.
- Store cleaned celery upright in a wide glass or cup filled half full of water in the fridge until you are ready to use it. The Victorians made special vases for this very purpose. This is a good way to store other things like parsley or cleaned carrots.
- Cleaning the microwave. Sometimes we make things so much more difficult and expensive than they need to be. Here is an example:The actual tip says, “Heat water and vinegar to clean the microwave.”
But here’s the easy way: You don’t need to bother with the vinegar at all. It really doesn’t work any better than plain water. If you keep on top of cleaning your microwave, you can make it even easier by heating up a cup of water for tea. Then you can wipe the microwave just before you sit down and enjoy your tea. Keep it simple!
I’d like to do some kind of Mexican pasta dish, but baked in the oven. Maybe I will tweak this and come up with something.
Love your newsletter, hints, everything! One heads up, though, on today’s hint to keep celery in a cup of water in the refrigerator: the newer ‘frost free’ refrigerators will work overtime (=increased electrical costs) trying to remove any moisture/evaporation source so itt might be wise to make sure the container is covered. Thank you again, Jill and Tawra…I really appreciate your wise, frugal and fun approach to running a household.
When I am freezing small bags of ground beef (or whatever) I like to use inexpensive
sandwich zip bags—then put all of them in a quart or gallon size freezer bag. I think it protects
from freezer burn and odors even for short-term freezing, plus I can find them. Used
freezer bags (I wash mine until they spring holes) work great. I love your recipes and tips.
Tommie in Abilene
Re: Cleaning microwave. The way I clean mine is…I use the vinegar and water because it doesn’t streak the glass. ANother thing I do is I turn my micrwave upside down and wash the top of it as if it were the bottom. Then flip it back over and wash the bottom. Viola…no problem.
I have a tip for keeping celery crisp: Trim the root end just a little – not enough to separate the individual ribs, but to open up the end to pull water back up into the ribs. Take a sheet of aluminum foil (I use heavy duty) and stand the stalk in the middle. Bring up the ends of the foil to the sides of the stalk, then go back and bring up the shorter sides up to the stalk. Take your hands and form this ‘cup’ snugly around the whole stalk. Pour about a tablespoon down in to the bottom of the ‘cup’ and return to the original plastic bag in which it came. I take a bread tie and close up the top of the bag (there are holes in the bag itself to allow the celery to breath but that’s why it gets limp in the first place, especially in a frost-free refrigerator). If the stalk is limp to begin with, it will take a couple of days to rehydrate, but I have kept celery like this for up to 2 weeks. I also don’t separate each rib when I cam cutting the celery. I learned this from a cooking show on TV. Take the whole stalk and cut crosswise to obtain the necessary amount of celery you need. The stalk holds together and gives something to grip when cutting. You can cut thin or thick slices. It only takes about four cuts to get a cup of celery. Hope this helped some of you.
Oops! I meant to say “pour about a tablespoon of WATER” down inside the ‘cup’.