Mexican Pasta Salad….

Mexican Pasta Salad is one of our new family favourites – it’s super easy to make and easy to adapt to whatever you have in the house that needs using up…

Last Summer, I made the most amazing homemade potato salad – in fact. I’m pretty sure that I called it the best potato salad you’d ever taste at the time and I still stand by that claim! 😂  I was making a batch of it last week and when I realised that I had a bit of the mayo and sour cream sauce mix leftover so I decided to try and make some sort of spicy pasta using some leftover pasta that I had in the fridge.

I added some tinned sweetcorn and peas, leftover ham, some sliced jalapenos and some Mexican seasoning, gave it all a good stir and popped it in the fridge for an hour just to let the flavours infuse and then served it alongside the potato salad, some homemade coleslaw and some burgers and it was perfect.

The mayo and the sour cream mixture is just super versatile and because we liked this Mexican spicy pasta so much, we changed our meal plan for last week.   So, the night I was planning on making a Nandos fakeaway, we (meaning me) cooked up the chicken with the Nandos seasoning and some pasta mid-afternoon between work calls and let them cool. When it came to putting tea together I just switched out the sweetcorn and Mexican seasoning and added in the sliced Nandos flavoured chicken and some finely chopped green peppers which I had been planning on using in the Nandos Spicy Rice that I always make when we have a fakeaway Nandos. It was lovely and definitely one I’ll be making again although I must admit that the Mexican pasta salad did just beat it for flavour.

Mexican Pasta Salad....

Yield: 6

Prep Time: 20 minutes

Cook Time: 12 minutes

Total Time: 32 minutes

Mexican Pasta Salad is our favourite way to use up leftovers! It's is perfect to take along to a BBQ if you don't want to go along empty-handed but it's equally perfect to make for lunch for the family. It's super flexible as you can switch up the ingredients depending on what you have in!

I'd say it serves six as a side dish and 3/4 as a lunch.

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Ingredients

• 200g pasta - macaroni works well
• 4 tablespoons mayonnaise
• 4 tablespoons sour cream
• 1 small tin sweetcorn
• 100g gammon/chicken leftovers
• A couple of chopped jalapeno slices from a jar
• Mexican seasoning (I used a Schwartz sachet that I got free in the street when they were handing them out as some sort of promotion)
• (Optional: Anything else you want to throw in)

Instructions

1. Mix together the mayo, sour cream and Mexican seasoning together in a bowl and pop in the fridge for half an hour or so to let the seasoning do its stuff.
2. Cook and drain the pasta and leave it to one side to cool. I'm estimating 200g of dried pasta but I generally just add in extra when I'm cooking pasta for tea and use what's left for lunch the next day.
3. Combine the mayo mix with the pasta and add in your gammon, sweetcorn and jalapenos.
4. You can add in anything else you like but I try not to add in too much - maybe a chopped green pepper and some red onion if I have them in.
5. Stand back and watch everyone dig in.

I’m now trying to think of other combinations – maybe ham, pea and mint or some kind of chilli and sun-dried tomato kind of combo. 

And don’t forget to have a go at making my life-changing potato salad recipe:

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