Cilantro Lime Ranch Pasta Salad

Back in March Lily and I fly down and visited Sierra Vista while James opened up his senior outdoor track season at a meet at USC. We had a great time playing with cousins, aunts, uncles, Grammaroney and Pepperoni(get it...Papa Maroney, James came up with that one).

While we were there we had a BBQ with our neighbors across the street, if we shared a fence my dad and Mr. Keith would be like Tim Taylor and Wilson Wilson.

My twin sister came up with this cafe rio inspired pasta salad and so this weekend for a BBQ with some other couples in our ward I decided to make it, along with a Caprese Pasta salad and baked beans. (We got pasta at Smith's for $.50 a box a couple weeks ago so we have a lot of pasta, hence 2 pasta salads)

I used Rotini I feel like it's a great pasta salad noodle, I used one box of regular and one of veggie.

I cooked and drained noodles while I made the Café Rio dressing.

After stirring in the dressing reserving some for later, I added quartered grape tomatoes, black beans, corn and a little red onion (I usually use yellow onion but I had some red onion in my fridge I needed to use)

Before serving I added the rest of the dressing (while refrigerating the pasta soaks up the dressing so to keep the salad from seeming dry I always add a little dressing right before serving), avocado and Queso Fresco.

Cilantro Lime Pasta Salad

A box and a half of rotini (1.5 lbs)

1 can of black beans-drained

4 tomatoes-chopped (I take the seeds out so it doesn’t make the salad too wet)

1 10 oz. bag of frozen corn (you could use canned or fresh) 

Cilantro Lime Ranch Dressing (Reserve ¾ of a cup)

2 avocados-chopped

5 oz. Queso Fresco-crumbled(1/2 a package) 

Cook your pasta and drain. In a large bowl combine the pasta, beans, tomatoes, corn and dressing. Put it in the fridge to let it chill. Add the avocado, queso fresco, and reserved dressing right before serving. 

*With my family I also added a little bit of minced onion. 

Cilantro Lime Ranch Dressing 

(This is my version of “Café Rio” dressing- I have also used Coconut milk instead of buttermilk to make it low sugar. It is also delicious over salads and on top of tacos)

2 Tomatillos Chopped

1 Jalapeno chopped

2 cloves of garlic

½ cup of chopped cilantro

1 cup of buttermilk

1 cup of mayo

Juice of 2 limes

1 packet of Ranch seasoning 

Salt and pepper to taste

Combine all of the ingredients in a blender and whirl it up until smooth.