Greek Tortellini Salad

This Greek Tortellini salad is a mix of cheese tortellini, cucumbers, olives, tomatoes, and feta cheese, all tossed in a Greek dressing. It makes for the perfect summer side dish or meatless main course!

A good pasta salad is always a hit during the summer, especially when brought to a cookout, potluck or even if you’re just grilling at home as a side dish! This is not just any pasta salad, adding tortellini in place of the pasta takes it to the next level! Then there is the Greek part I mean; how can you go wrong with a Greek salad?! Greek anything is delicious. This salad is honestly so darn easy to whip up in less than 30 minutes.

Ingredients for Greek Tortellini Pasta Salad

• Cheese Tortellini – I prefer to use refrigerated cheese tortellini for this recipe. But you can use frozen, or even dried tortellini.

• Feta Cheese – You can buy a block of feta cheese and crumble it into the salad or buy pre-crumbled feta cheese.

• Cucumber – I like to use English cucumbers because they’re seedless. You can use standard cucumbers as well, and just remove the seeds if preferred that way. I also like to leave the skin on the cucumber, that is also up to you. I like the crunch and color it adds to the salad.

• Grape Tomatoes – Grape or cherry tomatoes both work for this recipe.

• Kalamata Olives – If you know me, you know I love olives so you know any pasta salad I make there will be olives present in the salad. If it were up to my husband olives would be left out of this recipe. Make sure to buy pitted Kalamata olive for this recipe.

• Red Onion – I’m not a fan of red onion but I’m aware that the red onion gives this salad some great flavor. I prefer to slice the in slightly larger chunks to make it easier to pick through them if needed.

• Greek Dressing – Feel free to make a homemade Greek dressing for this recipe. For me I prefer convivence when it comes to this recipe. Ken’s Greek dressing is my favorite for this recipe.

How to Make Greek Tortellini Salad

1. Chop Your Ingredients – First, wash the grape tomatoes and cucumbers and drain the kalamata olives. Dice the cucumbers either with a knife or a vegetable chopper. Slice the tomatoes and kalamata olives in half.
   • Cooking Tip: While chopping your ingredients bring a pot of water to a boil to cook the tortellini.
2. Cook the Tortellini – Cook the tortellini according to directions. Then rinse with cold water. Rinsing the pasta helps to stop the cooking process and also prevents the noodles from sticking together.
3. Toss Everything together – Add the tortellini to a large bowl. Make sure to remove any excess water from the tortellini. Add in the feta cheese, cucumbers, tomatoes, olives, red onion, Greek dressing, salt, and pepper. Toss the salad to coat evenly.
4. Serve – Serve or chill the salad covered for an hour or two, to allow the flavors to marinate, then toss again and enjoy. Great for cookouts, potlucks, side dish, meatless main meal, the ideas are endless!

Can you make Greek Tortellini Salad the day before? – Yes, definitely! It’s a great side dish to make the day before a party or potluck. Because this gives the tortellini time to soak up the dressing. I would recommend if you’re planning on making it ahead of time to put only half of the dressing in when you make it and right before you plan to serve it toss in the remaining dressing.

How Long Will the Tortellini salad keep in the refrigerator? I would give the salad a five day limit in the refrigerator.

Can you freeze the Tortellini salad? I would not recommend freezing the salad.