Pair pasta with a pickle juice dressing for a light, refreshing salad that scales well for meal prep. Add some sous vide chicken for protein, and we’re in business.

Time: 4/5
Don’t worry, sous vide time is passive time.

Effort: 3/5
I’m not going to say this recipe is easy … but I wouldn’t describe it as hard.

Cool Cucumber

An unseasonal heat wave hitting in March gave me just the excuse to try out pasta salad as a meal prep option.

I’ve never had American style Macaroni salad before, so I thought I’d try and recreate it to see what it’s like. But then, I look at all the mayonnaise and I start to worry if I’d like it. So, I set about brainstorming about ways to lighten up the salad (and perhaps in doing so defeating my original purpose).

So here we are, after substituting most of the mayo with Greek yogurt, adding pickle juice to the dressing (which turned out to be a genius move) and bulking the salad up with some chicken breasts. I also changed up the vegetables, taking inspiration from an amazing Japanese potato salad we had for breakfast in Tokyo. That would be a story for another time.

This recipe was also an opportunity to get in some meal prep synergy, on two levels. First, the sous vide process leaves you with a big pot of warm water that comes to a boil very quickly to cook the pasta. Next, having gone through the trouble to boil all that water, why not use it for more than one recipe? I used the same pot right afterwards to blanche some broccoli for an experimental stir fry. It’s like super-setting at the gym to save on time!

Anyways, I’m super happy about the results of this superset meal prep. Both the meals tasted pretty good, and 12 portions over 3 hours isn’t too bad considering half of that time was spent doing chores while waiting for the chicken to cook sous vide.

Dramatis Personae

Served 6.

Fusilli – 500g

Small pasta shapes always surprise me by how much they swell up after cooking. While hot pasta dishes often call for the noodles to be cooked al dente, keep in mind that the pasta will harden as they cook down and sit in the fridge for a couple days. That’s why I like to cook pasta all the way to well done when making salad.

Chicken breasts – 1000g

Gotta get that protein down the hatch, bro’s trying to get big(ger) here! Any cooking method would work in an application like this, so roast / poach / pan sear away if that’s what you prefer.

I cooked mine sous vide with some salt and pepper, because it’s a hands-off and foolproof way to cook a lot of chicken at the same time. I don’t even defrost the chicken, and it’s so much easier that way. Besides, I bought my immersion circulator second-hand for like 60 bucks and I’m determined to get my money’s worth out of it.

Vegetables

Carrots – 3, medium

Peeled, diced fine and given a brief sauté before mixed in with the other veggies. Raw carrot is a bit too grassy and crunchy for my taste, and I’m going to sauté the onion anyway so I might as well do both at the same time.

Shallot – 1, large

Again, finely diced and briefly sautéed to tone down the harsh spiciness that would otherwise remain. An optional step, if you can get your hands on mild or sweet onions, or like your onions raw.

Cucumbers – 2, long

Finely diced like the rest, but no sauté. Unlike most vegetarian, I’m fine with raw cucumber because that’s part of my culinary culture and I grew up eating things like Cucumber and Wood Ear Mushroom Salad. However, don’t let that stop you from sautéing cucumbers in other contexts because cucumber is delicious in a stir fry and I should show you that sometime!

Sweet corn – 200g

Brings a lot to the table in the form of sweetness, juiciness and pop. Get them in a box or a can, unless they’re in season and you can get them super fresh.

Dressing

Pickle juice – a couple tablespoons

The unexpected VIP of the dressing! Salty, tangy and spicy (from the peppers), the pickle juice brought a lot of excitement into the salad dressing. It incorporated very well thanks to the emulsifiers in the mayo, and I didn’t even need to add any more salt!

If you don’t have this divine Epicurian gift, you’ll have to bring in acidity with other means like some sort of vinegar, or lemon juice.

Mayonnaise – 2 tablespoons

Kewpie mayo, officially to echo the Japanese potato salad that inspired the vegetable portion of this recipe. But in truth, it’s just what I had. Mayo has emulsifiers in it, which will come in handy when integrating the other ingredients into a cohesive dressing 

Greek yogurt – 6 tablespoons

My go-to substitute when I want thickness, richness and creaminess without all the calories in mayo. It won’t taste the same if you leave out all the mayo, but you’ll be surprised how much mayo you can get away with if you do a partial substitution (or have something else like cheese to fill in, like this no-mayo tuna melt.

Keep the little bit of yogurt left in the bottom of the container, and you can use the residue to start a batch of your own home-made yogurt!

Executive summary

1. Bag up frozen chicken breasts and cook for 3 hours at 60C/140F.
2. Wash and cut up carrots and shallots. Briefly sauté, then turn off the heat. While the pan cools down, wash and dice the cucumbers.
3. Add cucumbers, corn and dressing ingredients to the pan. Stir to combine, taste and adjust for seasoning.
4. Do some cleaning up while waiting for the chicken to cook. Catch up on chores or whatever else needs doing.
5. Once chicken is done, remove from pot and allow to cool on cutting board.
6. Bring the sous vide water to a boil, and cook pasta until well done. Drain the pasta well.
7. Cube up the chicken while pasta drains. Add chicken and pasta to pan, stir to combine.
8. Refrigerate overnight. Served chilled.

Play by Play

Last things first. The chicken is going to take the longest, so let’s set that up first. If you have never tried sous vide from frozen, I highly encourage you try! No slime, no splash, no mess.

A closer look at the displacement method at work. Submerge the zip-lock bag in the water with a small opening, then swish the bag around to get all the air out before sealing it up. It works well enough that I don’t bother messing with dedicated sous vide bags and vacuum sealers.

Here’s a diagrammatic representation of how I dice the carrots: peel, section, strips then dice. I like to keep a plastic bag next to the cutting board when I work, so I don’t need to make a million trips to the trash can.

The carrots take some time to cook, but the shallots only need a quick kiss of heat. This stainless steel pan has the advantage of being big enough to be my mixing bowl, as well as being dishwasher safe, which means less clean up to do at the end of the day.

Forming the dressing right in the pan. You could do this before or after the corn and cucumber, but definitely have the dressing together by the time the pasta is done or there won’t be enough space to stir. The mayo will emulsify everything together nicely.

Hang on to that little bit of residual yogurt clinging onto the sides of the container, and you can use it as starter for the next batch of home made yogurt.

While I was messing around with the vegetables, the sous vide water has come to a boil. The pasta goes in, and I set a timer to remind myself when they are done.

Now that the chicken is cubed and the pasta is drained, everything can come together. Last chance to taste for seasoning.

Into the fridge. Good night pasta, I will see you tomorrow. Remember that big pot of hot water from cooking the pasta? I’m going to blanche some broccoli for a stir fry with that, to be tonight’s dinner.

Time to plate up and eat. Too bad the boss lady isn’t home tonight, but the thing about salad is that they’re even better the next day.

It’s carbs, it’s protein, it’s vegetables, it all fits on a spoon. I love it when a meal is so efficient, and I love it even more with a delicious, tangy pickle juice dressing.

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