So this Pinterest attempt looked easy enough, and fortunately it was! And if I had some sort of offspring, other than my hell spawn cat, I'd bet they'd be really flippin' excited. Good thing I'm a giant 6 year old anyways.
First things first. You do not want to make a whole box of pasta at a time. So this is great if your trying to for portion control (which I completely lack when it comes to pasta!) split the box in half. It's easy enough to make and quick so splitting the box in half isn't an earth shattering annoyance. I promise.
Here's what you'll need:
1 cucumber (peeled)
A carton of cherry tomatoes
Small yellow onion diced
Supreme salad seasoning
Italian dressing (I like the ken's with the aged Romano in it for a more flavorful taste)
6 ziplock bags
Fun food coloring (I used the neon pack and the regular pack for a nice assortment)
Water
1) pull out a pot and fill it a little over a half way with water. Add salt to taste and bring to a boil.
2) while your water is attempting to boil. Put 20 drops of food coloring into each ziplock bag. Followed by 2 tbs of water. Make sure you seal those bags up! They tend to roll and I'm not kidding you, it will look like a piñata blew up in your kitchen. For food coloring I used all of the colors in the neon pack, purple, teal, green, and pink. I added the red and the true green from the regular pack.
3) once your water is boiled, add your pasta and follow directions to cook al dente. ( I don't like al dente pasta, so I cooked it where it was just past this but not fully cooked)
4) once the pasta is cooked to al dente throw pasta into a colander and rinse with cold water! This stops the pasta from cooking! Add more water to your pot! Put back on your stove too reduce heat to medium. Water needs to be warm but not boiling!
5) now that your pasta has been run under the cold water, start portioning out the pasta equally into the different ziplock bags and mix in the bag until the pasta and colors are fully combined. Try not to get too excited here like I did! You want to let this sit for a few minutes!
6) now that your pasta has set in the bags for a minute or so, empty the bags out into the colander. rinse with cold water until clear.
** my advice to you is to do one bag at a time. The recipe on Pinterest says to empty them all into your strainer at once but the colors bleed onto each other and you start to get weird looking pasta instead of nice bright colors! **
7) once all the extra color has been rinsed off the pasta, add back to you pot of warm water for a minute or so to fully cook the pasta. (In here the green dye that was in the neon package will turn a nice yellow, hense the true green)
8) drain pasta, add enough salad dressing to wet the pasta but not to pool at the bottom (you can always add more later) and put Ito te fridge to chill.
9) halve the cherry tomatoes and slice a peeled cucumber into thick slices, then quarter the slices. Dice a yellow onion (you probably only want about 1/8 of a cup for a half lbs of pasta)
10) add veggies to your pasta. This is when you want to add in your salad supreme seasoning. Add to taste. I usually add it until you can see the little orange dots in the seasoning cover the pasta after you've mixed it (about 2 tbs for a full box) I understand this direction is super scientific, you'll understand when you start adding the seasoning!
11) chill and serve!
