With pasta, chicken, sweet fruit, salty cashews, and a creamy dressing, every bite of this Cashew Chicken Pasta Salad is like a circus of flavors!
Don’t miss our Easy Cashew Chicken if your craving the stir fry!
Cashew Chicken Pasta Salad Recipe
You can put pasta salad right up there with pie, Oreos, cheese, and freshly baked bread. In other words, some of my favorite things. It’s easy, hearty, appropriate for lunch or dinner, a full meal or a side dish, you can make it ahead of time, provides left overs the next day, or feeds a lot of people making it perfect for a pot luck, and it’s just delicious. This Cashew Chicken Pasta Salad is no exception!
I’ve brought this pasta salad to so many get togethers and I always leave with an empty bowl – everyone loves it! With spiral pasta, cooked chicken, fresh fruit, salty crunchy cashews, and a creamy dressing, it’s loaded with texture and flavor. Sort of reminds me of a cross between my broccoli salad and chicken salad. Sweet and savory combos are always the best!
Ingredients Needed
Here’s what you’ll need to make this easy pasta salad recipe.
(Scroll to the bottom for our easy printable recipe with the complete directions.)
- Rotini pasta – We love this shape of pasta, but really any short pasta with grooves works great.
- Cooked chicken – diced up baked chicken breast or rotisserie chicken
- Pineapple – fresh or canned
- Celery
- Grapes – both red and green for a nice color contrast
- Dried cranberries
- Roasted and salted cashews
- Scallions
- Dressing – a mixture of Ranch dressing and mayonnaise
Recipe Variations
- Almonds instead of cashews
- Plain Greek yogurt instead of mayonnaise
- Red onion instead of the scallions
- Golden raisins instead of the dried cranberries
Video: How to Make Cashew Chicken Pasta Salad
(Scroll to the bottom for our easy printable recipe with the complete directions.)
Make Ahead and Storing Leftovers
As with most pasta salads, the longer all the ingredients mingle, the deeper the flavors. However, I also think with most pasta salads, the longer they’re in the refrigerator, the more they dry out.
For this Cashew Chicken Pasta Salad I recommend either serving it right away, or chilling in the refrigerator for just 1-2 hours. It won’t be at all bad if it chills for longer, it just won’t be as creamy. Either way, though – DELISH.
More Pasta Salad Recipes:
- Greek Pasta Salad
- Chicken Caesar Pasta Salad
- Lemon Orzo Salad
- Chicken Broccoli Pasta Salad
- Cowboy Pasta Salad
- Italian Chopped Salad
I hope you love this delicious and easy recipe – be sure to give it a review below! Also don’t forget to follow Belly Full on TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, and YouTube!
Cashew Chicken Pasta Salad
Ingredients
- 16 ounce package rotini pasta
- 1 cup Ranch salad dressing
- 3/4 cup mayonnaise
- 4 cups cubed cooked chicken breast
- 20 ounce can pineapple tidbits, drained
- 1 cup sliced celery
- 4 whole scallions, diced
- 1 cup seedless red grapes, sliced in half
- 1 cup seedless green grapes, sliced in half
- 5 ounce package dried cranberries
- 2 cups roasted and salted cashews
Instructions
- Cook pasta al dente according to package directions, then drain and rinse under cold water.
- In the meantime, prep all your other ingredients.
- In a large bowl whisk together the Ranch and mayonnaise. Add in the chicken, pineapple, celery, scallions, red grapes, green grapes, cranberries, and cooked pasta; toss to combine so everything is coated.
- Cover and refrigerate until ready to serve. Just before serving stir in the cashews.
Actually decided to make this for dinner – because why not? Entire family loved it!
Serves 12? Is that as main dish or side dish? I need to serve as a main dish to my Bunco group. Thanks… looks yummy…
It’s typically served as a side dish, about 1 cup per serving.
This is very delicious. I used a buttermilk ranch and cut the chicken smaller. Everyone loved it!
Can’t wait to make this, I’ll just double the sauce, so it doesn’t dry out.
This was a big hit at our house. I would highly recommend it!!
Made this for the first time tonight…it is awesome! I did substitute red onions for the scallions and used fresh pineapple instead of tidbits (since I ad fresh)…absolutely delightful! Thanks for this great recipe!
Made this for a bridal brunch and it disappeared! Thank you so much. Great recipe.
This was SO delicious!!