It’s a delicious deli side, it’s the perfect picnic or potluck pick. It’s creamy, it’s comforting… it’s Macaroni Salad. And we can’t imagine our lives without it. But when you’re serving something as ubiquitous as Macaroni Salad, you want to make sure you’re serving a version that’s memorable, which is exactly why we set out to find the best version out there. We chose four celebrity Macaroni Salad recipes — each with their own unique techniques and ingredients — and put them to the test. Read on to see if we found the ultimate Macaroni Salad!
The Contenders:
We chose Macaroni Salad recipes from four different celebrities — some chefs, some not so much.
Mark Wahlberg:
Mark Wahlberg isn’t the first person you’d think to turn to for anyrecipe, but he does have a brother who’s a chef so we figured it was worth a try.
Guy Fieri:
Guy Fieri is known for recipes that are a little quirky and usually have a little kick. We’re looking for a Macaroni Salad that’s a little out of the ordinary and we were pretty sure he’d give us that.
Dolly Parton:
Dolly may be the Queen of Country but we’ve loved every recipe of hers we’ve ever tried. She sure knows how to write a tune (and sing it!) but she knows comfort food too.
Alex Guarnaschelli:
She’s an Iron Chef! Why wouldn’t we turn to her for a take on a comfort food classic?
How We Tested:
We had two chefs take two recipes each and make them side by side in the studio. (These are some of our favorite days at work!) We stayed true to the original recipes, not changing a thing, and then tasted them all. We had three testers for this round: our producer, Mark, and our chefs, Dom and Kristy.
The Macaroni Salads:
Mark Wahlberg
Mark calls for pretty standard Macaroni Salad ingredients. He uses elbow macaroni, mayo, garlic powder, celery salt, green bell pepper, celery, red onions, parsley, and an optional dash of cayenne pepper. Pretty standard stuff! The instructions are simple too. Mark has you simply cook the pasta and rinse it under cold water before mixing it with the rest of the ingredients.
The end result is a very decent, solid Macaroni Salad. The flavor is really nice, very savory and keeps to the classic Macaroni Salad lane. The raw onion is a little sharp but the garlic powder adds an overall savoriness that carries through. It has nice crunch and texture and it’s a Macaroni Salad you’d be totally happy to find at any picnic or party. We did find it to be a little on the dry side, but that is easily remedied by upping the mayo content a bit. Then this would easily be a great Macaroni Salad.
Get the full recipe here: Mark Wahlberg’s Macaroni Salad.
Guy Fieri
Guy calls specifically for 1/4-inch tube macaroni, mayo, mustard, celery, red onion, and carrot. Those are pretty standard. But then, he also calls for: white vinegar, minced garlic, roasted red peppers, peppadew peppers, and pepperoncini. That’s a lot of flavor in one bowl! There isn’t any step that’s too out of the ordinary here. It’s pretty much your basic procedure. Guy has you mix together the dressing ingredients and chill them while you cool down the pasta, which he has you do by plunging the macaroni in an ice bath, which is a little unique. From there you just mix everything together and give it an hour in the fridge for the flavors to meld.
The end result is a very tasty Mac Salad. This is in no way your classic Macaroni Salad… It has a little bit of spice, a whole lot of flavor from the various peppers, and crunch from the celery and other veggies. It’s not the flavor profile you’d expect when you think Macaroni Salad, but it’s an excellent flavor profile nonetheless, and it’s perfectly creamy, which is what I want in any Macaroni Salad.
Get the full recipe here: Guy Fieri’s Mac-Daddi-Roni Salad.
Dolly Parton
Dolly’s Mac Salad looks classic, but there’s some hidden uniqueness in there. She calls for: elbow macaroni, green bell pepper, relish, onion, mayo, hard-boiled eggs, and salt and pepper. The things you wouldn’t expect as much are cucumbers, sour cream, and milk. Dolly has you run the cooked pasta under cold water and drain and then mix in diced cucumber, green bell peppers, grated onion, and relish. The dressing is mixed separately, which is a combination of mayo, sour cream, and milk, and then stirred into the macaroni mixture. Chopped eggs go in last — and gently — so as not to break them up too much. She suggests you chill it up to overnight to let those flavors meld.
I was a little hesitant at the sour cream and milk and worried that the dressing would be too liquidy, but actually everything absorbs quite nicely! The creaminess here ended up being totally on point! I would use that dressing strategy again any time. It’s a very good Macaroni Salad, one you’d be happy to find at any picnic or party, but surprisingly the flavor isn’t quite classic. Thanks to the cucumber and the tang of the sour cream, it gives a little bit of a tzatziki feeling, but that’s not a bad thing! It’s very refreshing and has a ton of crunch. Dolly knows what she’s doing!
Get the full recipe here: Dolly Parton’s Macaroni Salad.
Alex Guarnaschelli
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. 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 differently. 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.
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! Overall, though, the salad was a little dry and there was just a little too much going on flavor-wise.
Get the full recipe here: Alex Guarnaschelli’s Classic Macaroni Salad.
The Final Verdict:
So, who won it all?!
Guy Fieri!!!
It was a hard choice, as always, but Guy’s Macaroni Salad (excuse me, Mac-Daddi-Roni Salad) had the creaminess we crave and a flavor we didn’t expect. They were all worth making again (or at least borrowing some ideas from) but Guy’s is one that you’ll remember long after you put down your fork.