These layered pasta salad in cups are crafted using simple and healthy ingredients and are tossed in a mild and delicious dressing. Serve them at your next house party or get-together, or just make it when you’re looking to add a bit more oomph and flavor to your basic salad.
What’s best about this recipe is how delicious it ends up looking (and tasting), and how relatively simple it is to put together. Scroll down and read on to get a quick overview of how you, too, can replicate it in your kitchen.
Jump to:
Ingredients For the Recipe
You’ll need three sets of ingredients to make this layered pasta salad in cups.
For the mayonnaise
- Mayonnaise (normal): ¼ cup
- Mayonnaise (flavored): ¼ cup
- Pepper powder: 1 tsp
- Salt: 1 tsp
- Parsley (chopped): 2 tbsp
- Lime juice: 2 tbsp
For the pasta
- Pasta (cooked): 1 cup
- Prepared mayonnaise
For the layered salad
- Prepared pasta
- Chicken ham (chopped)
- Onions (chopped)
- Tomatoes (chopped)
- Broccoli (blanched)
- Cheese (grated)
- Prepared mayonnaise
How to Make the Pasta Salad in Cups
Once you have all your ingredients ready, here’s what you need to do to put the dish together.
For the mayonnaise mixture, add all the ingredients in a bowl and mix well.
Next, add half the mayonnaise to the pasta and mix.
Take individual glasses or glass bowls. Add the pasta as the first layer.
Follow that with the chicken ham,
Onions & Tomatoes,
Broccoli
And cheese.
Top up the salad with the remaining mayonnaise mixture.
Serve cold!
Frequently Asked Questions
The fun part about making these pasta salad in cups is that you can go ahead and experiment with your choice of toppings and add-ons. You can add some boiled golden corn, chopped lettuce, grilled zucchini, chopped bell peppers and carrots too! 
You can use practically any kind of pasta of your choice to make this pasta salad. Penne and macaroni are two classics, but you can also opt for fettuccine or even rotini if that’s what you have at hand.
Orzo pasta is another excellent option- just make sure you don’t end up overcooking it. 
You can use any mildly flavored mayonnaise you can get your hands on- most supermarkets have tons of different options for you to pick from. If you don’t have anything except regular mayonnaise, you can just mix a bit of paprika or peri peri seasoning or any other seasoning of your choice into the mayonnaise, and turn it into a flavored mayonnaise. 
While chicken ham does lend the salad a nice flavor and adds all the extra protein too, you can still whip up the pasta salad in cups without it. You can use canned and drained chickpeas (lightly seasoned) as an alternative, or even layer opt for some pan fried tofu or cottage cheese cubes. 
Your leftover pasta salad can be refrigerated for up to 2 days. Ideally, it is best to store the pasta and the veggies in separate containers, but if you’ve already assembled the salad, you can just transfer the leftovers in an airtight container or a glass mason jar. 
Tips & Tricks to Make the Pasta Salad in Cups
While putting this salad together is super easy, you might want to keep these additional tips and tricks in mind to make sure you nail the recipe.
- To make these pasta salad in cups healthier, you can swap the regular pasta for lentil pasta or whole grain pasta.
- Not a fan of mayonnaise? You can use sour cream or hung curd instead as a healthier replacement.
- Your shredded cheese can also be swapped with feta cheese if you’re specifically looking to make the salad healthier.
- You can also throw in some sliced olives and/or jalapenos to bring in a bit of a tangy flavor to the salad. Don’t have any of those? You could use pickled onions too!
- To enhance the flavor of the salad, you can add some garlic powder and onion powder into the mayonnaise dressing.
- To give the salad a bit of a spicy taste, you can throw in some red pepper flakes or add some paprika into the mix.
- To make the salad look a bit more interesting, swap the chopped tomatoes for halved cherry tomatoes, and sprinkle some chopped coriander or scallion greens on the top.
Serving Ideas & Suggestions
This flavorful and delicious pasta salad is quite filling and can be served on its own, or paired with any main of your choice.
Enjoyed trying out this delicious salad recipe? Looking for some more interesting healthy salads to try your hands at? Here’s a quick list of some of the best ones.
📖 Recipe
Layered Christmas Pasta Salad in Cups
Ingredients
Ingredients For The Mayonnaise
- ¼ cup Mayonnaise , (normal)
- ¼ cup Mayonnaise , (flavored)
- 1 teaspoon Pepper Powder
- 1 teaspoon Salt
- 2 tablespoon Parsley , (chopped)
- 2 tablespoon Lime Juice
Ingredients For The Pasta
- 1 cup Pasta , (cooked)
- 1 bowl Prepared Mayonnaise
Ingredients For The Layered Salad
- 1 cup Prepared Pasta
- 1 cup Chicken Ham , (chopped)
- 1 cup Onions , (chopped)
- 1 cup Tomatoes , (chopped)
- 1 cup Broccoli , (blanched)
- 1 cup Cheese , (grated)
- 1 bowl Prepared Mayonnaise
Instructions
- For the mayonnaise mixture, add all the ingredients in a bowl and mix well.
- Next, add half the mayonnaise to the pasta and mix.
- Take individual glasses or glass bowls. Add the pasta as the first layer.
- Follow that with the chicken ham, onions, tomatoes, broccoli and cheese.
- Top up the salad with the remaining mayonnaise mixture.
- Serve cold!
Notes
- You can make as many cups as you would like by adjusting the quantity of the
- You can also just make this recipe with just normal We used half normal and half spiced/flavored mayonnaise to add in more flavors.
Leave a Reply