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Alex Guarnaschelli is a powerhouse. She’s a cookbook author, executive chef, and personality on countless cooking shows, and not to mention, an Iron Chef. You can be sure that she can make a great Macaroni Salad, but from her you’d probably expect it to be something out of the ordinary, which is exactly why we wanted to try her Macaroni Salad recipe.
We made this Macaroni Salad as a part of our Celebrity Macaroni Salad Recipe Showdown. The showdown is a fun project where we take four celebrity recipes — some celebrity chefs, some not so much — cook them, and then taste and compare them to see how they stack up. This match-up included Dolly Parton, Alex Guarnaschelli, Guy Fieri, and Mark Wahlberg. We ended up with four very different mac salads!
What’s In Alex Guarnaschelli’s Macaroni Salad?
Alex’s ingredient list doesn’t look quite like your traditional mac salad. She calls for macaroni and mayo, which are traditional enough, but then also Dijon mustard, red wine vinegar, soy sauce, hot sauce, red onion, red bell pepper, scallions, fresh basil, and fresh dill. It’s a flavor jubilee.
How Do You Make Alex Guarnaschelli’s Macaroni Salad?
With Alex’s recipe, you do what you usually do with macaroni salad — you cook the macaroni and then you mix everything together — but she has a few things she does different. First, she has you soak the red onion in ice water for at least an hour. This removes any sharpness from the onion and is a really smart technique.
Second, she has you drain the macaroni and spread it out on a sheet pan without rinsing it. This lets it cool but does it without removing any starch from the pasta. Again, smart.
From there, you mix together all the ingredients and let it sit at room temperature for ten minutes or so before you chill it down. At the end, you stir in the fresh herbs and serve.
How Did It Taste?
Alex calls her Macaroni Salad classic, but it didn’t taste that way to any of us. It has robust flavor, don’t get me wrong, but it isn’t the clean creamy Macaroni Salad experience you probably envision in your head. To some of our testers, the soy sauce came through a little too strongly though the little kick of the hot sauce and the fresh herbs were very nice touches. The technique was on point and we’ll definitely be borrowing that onion soaking and sheet pan pasta cooling in the future!
We made this as part of our Celebrity Recipe Showdown.
To see how it stacked up, read on here:
Celebrity Macaroni Salad Recipe Showdown
You can see the other celebrity Macaroni Salad recipes here:
Mark Wahlberg’s Macaroni Salad
Guy Fieri’s Mac-Daddy-Roni Salad
Dolly Parton’s Macaroni Salad
Alex Guarnaschelli's Classic Macaroni Salad
Yield(s): Serves 8
10m prep time
10m cook time
Diet: Vegetarian
you're making mealtime meaningful.
Ingredients
- 3/4 cup mayonnaise
- 1 tablespoon Dijon mustard
- 1 tablespoon red wine vinegar
- 2 teaspoons soy sauce
- 1 teaspoon hot sauce (such as Tabasco)
- 1 small red onion, diced, soaked in ice water at least 1 hour and up to 12 hours
- 1 large red bell pepper, diced
- 3 scallions (green parts only), thinly sliced
- Kosher salt
- 12 ounces elbow macaroni
- 1 sprig dill, leaves finely chopped
- 4 sprigs basil, leaves torn
Preparation
- First, make the dressing:
- In a large bowl, whisk together the mayonnaise, mustard, vinegar, soy sauce, and hot sauce until smooth. Drain, dry the red onion, and stir into the dressing along with the bell pepper and scallions. Season with a generous pinch of salt. Set aside.
- In a large pot of salted boiling water, cook the pasta until al dente, 6-10 minutes. Drain, but do not rinse. Spread out on a large baking sheet to cool slightly, 5-10 minutes.
- While pasta is still warm, add to the bowl with the dressing, and stir. Let sit at room temperature 10-15 minutes, then cover and chill until ready to serve.
- Stir in dill and basil just before serving and season with salt and pepper to taste.
Recipe adapted from Food Network.