Italian Pasta Salad – Weight Watchers

Italian Pasta Salad – A lightened up version of the classic Summer pasta Salad loaded with cherry tomatoes, turkey pepperoni, mozzarella balls, and cucumbers. 

Pasta Salads are pretty much a blank canvas and you can add to them whatever your little heart desires! The hardest part about making them is probably boiling the noodles and doing all the prep work. If you don’t know how to boil noodles by now, there’s probably plenty of youtube videos of that online.  Don’t like cucumber? Leave them out. Like olives? Add them to this dish. This is just what I really liked and those peperoncino peppers are really good! Just give them a try if you’ve never had them before.

What is Peperonicino?

Peperoncino (Italian: [peperonˈtʃiːno]; plural peperoncini [-ni]; sometimes spelled pepperoncino or pepperoncini in English)^[a] is the generic Italian name for hot chili peppers, specifically the cultivars of the species Capsicum annuum and Capsicum frutescens.^[2] The sweet pepper is called peperone (plural peperoni) in Italian.^{[3] (source: From wikipedia) \}

How to Lighten Up Italian Pasta Salad

In order to lighten up this classic Summer pasta salad I used lite Italian Dressing, zero point vegetables such as cucumbers, cherry tomatoes, and pepperoni. Use Turkey pepperoni and fresh mozzarella balls. You could always buy the blocks of cheese and cut them up into tiny cubes if you prefer that instead of mozzarella balls, but tiny mozzarella balls are almost too cute to pass up and they are a must in this salad. Don’t overdress your pasta salad and you can still have pasta salad as a side dish this Summer.

What else can you add to Italian Pasta Salad ?

Black Olives

Bell Peppers

Parmesan Cheese

Pesto sauce instead of Italian Dressing ( but that would be more points

Red Onion too make the pasta more colorful

Looking for more pasta salad recipes? Try BLT Pasta Salad and Greek Orzo Salad with Mustard Dill Vinaigrette, 

and Caprese Pasta Salad

Video for Italian Pasta Salad: