Macaroni Salad - The Hillbilly Kitchen

howdy folks welcome to the hillbilly kitchen today we're making old-fashioned macaroni salad [Music] and this is kind of a basic macaroni salad recipe and you can add other stuff to it if you want to you can even leave stuff out if you don't like it and substitute stuff but once you have this basic recipe what you can do with it i mean the stuff you can add to it is just unreal so what you need to start with is i'm doing a half a pound of uncooked macaroni eight ounces if you wanted to do a whole box you would need to double everything else here if you're making it for a great big crowd so i started with eight ounces of uncooked macaroni just cook it according to the package directions three hard-boiled eggs a third of a cup of sweet pickle relish half a cup of mayonnaise and i've got a tablespoon of lemon juice and a tablespoon of sugar and about half a teaspoon of onion powder half teaspoon salt and a little bit of pepper maybe a quarter teaspoon to flavor it with and i've got kind of a medium to small carrot here that i dye stuff really fine and i'm using the carrot mostly to add texture and color to it and i'm using carrot because carrots one of those vegetables that everybody can eat so you can get that texture in there that tiny bit of crunch without having like onions in that a lot of people just cannot eat raw onions for different reasons or kids won't eat an onion but you dice these up really small and you get the texture and you get some color and it really adds a lot to it if you can't use the onions you could also use some chopped red or green bell peppers in this that would be delicious but i'm kind of doing the basic recipe so the boiled eggs you just want to chop them mash them whatever you can use a fork you can use a potato masher you can even use your hand and just squish them now i said that i did the pasta according to the package directions i cook my eggs and my pasta in together i put the eggs in my pot when i start my water with salt and i always put salt in my pasta it keeps it from sticking together and in this recipe you're going to rinse the pasta when you're done cooking it so you don't really need to worry about the salt that you add at the beginning if you want to adjust the salt or use a salt substitute or something you could do that when you get to this part of the recipe so if you're new to cooking or if you want a shortcut put your eggs in the water start the water add your salt you can cook it in one pot make sure you get your water to a full rolling boil before you add your pasta and then once you add your pasta turn the water down just enough so that it doesn't boil over you want to keep that full boil the whole time you're cooking it and if you don't um if you put your pasta in cold water it's going to stick together and lump up and you're going to have this pasta break in the bottom of it and you just want to stir it a few times like this was this is regular pasta it cooks in like 9 to 11 minutes if you're using thin wall pasta it'll cook much faster and you'll if you cook the eggs in with it you're going to want to let your eggs boil for uh three or four minutes before you add the pasta but regular pasta the eggs will be done when the pasta gets done now once you get your pasta cooked when i'm making pasta for cold dishes like this i always rinse it under cold water several times and that keeps it from sticking together you can see here how loose this is it's not stuck together and it's not starchy it gets rid of that excess starch and keeps it from sticking together but it also stops the cooking process so when your pasta gets as tender as you want it in your macaroni salad you want to rinse it in cold water if you don't if you leave it in that hot water or if you just drain it it's going to continue to cook and then that's going to make your pasta salad sticky and mushy and you don't want that run cold water over it and drain it run cold water over it or put it in a colander and run it under cold water for quite a while to make sure you stop that cooking process and get all that excess starch off of it okay now all i'm going to do is i'm just going to add all the rest of my ingredients here except for my pasta to my egg the lemon juice the sugar you can leave the sugar out if you want to but it really adds a lot of flavor to it and now i'm putting in my salt my pepper and my onion powder sugar in something like this is just a flavor enhancer it's not really to sweeten it i'm putting in my pickle relish and this is sweet um you could use dill pickle relish but it's going to totally change it so if you want that flavor if that's if you want to go for a more sour flavor you can definitely use dill pickles in this go ahead and add your mayonnaise and your carrots you want anywhere between a quarter cup and a half a cup like i said i just used kind of a medium small carrot um if you were using bell peppers in it too you might want to cut the carrot down and add you know like a quarter of a cup of carrot a quarter of a cup of pepper maybe a quarter of a cup of chopped onion but whatever you do chop it kind of fine because it it's just supposed to add a little crunch to your pasta salad or your macaroni salad but you don't want to have those big chunks of vegetables in it to eat you do want to kind of combine all these ingredients before you add your macaroni because if you put the macaroni in here and then you stir until all this stuff is combined it will kind of tend to break the macaroni noodles up and then you won't have the texture you want you'll have little bitty bits of pasta mixed all in your dressing and that doesn't make good macaroni salad and then just add in your um macaroni and you want to kind of fold this in now this is like the perfect side dish for all your fall cookouts and we cook out more in the fall than we do any other time of the year the weather's nice it's usually dry not too hot um all your tailgate parties and your football parties i know everybody's just watching college football this year but people are still having a lot of fall get-togethers fall festivals hot dog roasts anything like that it's a great side dish for pulled pork or barbecue sandwiches hamburgers any kind of cold sandwich even this is a really good side dish for it and it's literally that simple to make that's all there is to it it's completely done at this point now it is better if you make it at least a couple hours ahead of time and put it in the refrigerator you can make it a day or two ahead of time if you're having a cookout this weekend you could make it on a wednesday or thursday and have it for your cookout quick side dish for weeknight dinners you know a lot of times in the summer especially i'll make this and coleslaw and potato salad and we'll have the three in some combination maybe with baked beans all week long and i won't cook a lot of side dishes i'll just make us some kind of main course to go with it good with fried chicken too but hang on to this recipe and use it for all those get-togethers all your fall get-togethers this is an easy side dish especially if you're having like i said sandwiches or something if you're doing some kind of big gathering like bridal showers or baby showers even this is a good choice because you can make it ahead of time and you don't have to mess with it that day it's also a really inexpensive side dish pasta is one of the cheapest foods you can get right now and i know we're all trying to stretch our dollars especially with grocery prices being what they are now if you make this ahead of time sometimes it gets a little bit dry and if you don't want to add more mayo to it add just a little bit of milk add it like two or three tablespoons at a time to thin the dressing back out until you get it back to the consistency that you want and you know like i said that's all you would have to do maybe if you made it ahead of time you put it in the fridge and don't worry about it take it on a picnic seal it up in an airtight bowl and drop it in your cooler great for picnics before we go i want to thank elizabeth in mississippi i went out to my mailbox the other day and i was totally shocked by what i found uh your gift was so generous and um i really don't even know how to thank you for it i've been praying about what to do with it god bless you sister that was so sweet and it totally shocked me and it blessed me to know that there are people out there who are as generous as you and who care as much as you thank you and thank ally all for joining us in the hillbilly kitchen please don't forget to click like and subscribe before you leave and until next time remember to put god first [Music] you

Channel: The Hillbilly Kitchen - Down Home Country Cooking

Views: 80,310

Rating: 4.9489655 out of 5

Keywords: The hillbilly kitchen, bret and becky, comfort food, struggle food, quarantine cooking, southern cooking, cooking, cooking tutorial, grandmas recipe, home cooking, country cooking, How to make pasta salad, how to make macaroni salad, basic pasta salad, tailgate side, easy pasta salad, hamburger side dish, gameday food, pulled pork sandwich, hot dog, world's best macaroni salad, sloppy joe, bbq recipe, bacon cheeseburger, potato salad, recipe, macaroni salad recipe, tasty

Id: Pw8ZvgXlaUU

Length: 11min 17sec (677 seconds)

Published: Fri Sep 18 2020