This pesto pasta salad features homemade kale pesto, fresh mozzarella cheese, and cherry tomatoes. It’s not only easy to make, but it’s bursting with flavor, feeds a crowd, and keeps for days in the refrigerator. It’s a great make ahead recipe—the flavor is best on day 2 or 3!
Today’s pasta salad takes advantage of spring and summer’s bounty with fresh basil and lots of cherry tomatoes. (By the way, if you love these flavors—you will FLIP for this creamy pesto shrimp recipe.) We love adding a little crunch with pine nuts, but chopped walnuts would be equally as fabulous especially since walnuts are in the pesto itself. We can’t praise this recipe enough—it’s our summer anthem in the form of food.
For today’s pesto pasta salad, we’re using homemade kale pesto. It’s just like homemade pesto, but instead of basil we use kale. This kale pesto is extremely versatile—it’s fantastic on grilled meats and fish, warm pasta, in sandwiches, as a dip, and especially on cold pasta salads. You can even use it in place of regular pesto on pesto pizza or in this pesto pull-apart bread.
It’s also bursting with flavor thanks to bright lemon juice and garlic. We’ll also add parmesan cheese, walnuts, a little basil, olive oil, and salt. It tastes much better than store-bought—there is nothing like fresh pesto and you know what? It’s so much easier to make than you think. Just a few pulses in your food processor or blender does the trick.
Basil goes into the pasta salad itself, so if you want to simply use regular basil pesto instead of kale pesto, go for it.
If you enjoy using kale here, you’ll also enjoy its addition to my creamy butternut squash mac and cheese and maple-roasted squash kale salad.
In addition to homemade kale pesto, you need 5 more ingredients:
For even more inspiration here are 15+ summer dinner ideas!
This kale pesto mozzarella pasta salad is not only easy to make, but it's bursting with flavor, feeds a crowd, and keeps for days in the refrigerator.
