Greek pasta salad is only as good as its dressing. Too thin and the pasta dries out before you serve it. Too sharp and the vinegar fights the feta. There’s enough dressing here to actually coat the pasta, with garlic, fresh lemon, red wine vinegar, and a teaspoon of honey to take the bite off the acid.

A wooden spoon holds a serving of Greek Pasta Salad with rotini, cherry tomatoes, cucumbers, olives, red onion, and feta over a large bowl. Surrounding the bowl are small dishes of ingredients for this classic Greek Salad Recipe.

The salad stays shiny with dressing from the first toss through dinner, and the feta on top still looks like feta hours later instead of melting into the bowl.

A hand pours vinaigrette dressing from a jar onto a bowl of Greek Pasta Salad with cucumbers, tomatoes, red onion, bell peppers, olives, and feta cheese on a wooden table. Try this Greek Salad Recipe for a fresh, flavorful meal. — The vinaigrette in this Greek pasta salad was developed with enough oil, vinegar, and lemon juice to properly coat the rotini so doesn’t dry out in the fridge

Read Before You Start

The step that gets skipped most often is the one between cooking the pasta and adding it to the bowl: the cooling stage.

The pasta needs to be fully cool before it meets the dressing. Warm pasta soaks up the oil instead of getting coated by it, and that’s the single biggest reason a pasta salad goes dry overnight.

I drain into a colander, rinse under cold water until the colander itself is cool to the touch, then let it sit for another 5 minutes while I finish slicing tomatoes.

Ingredient Notes

Assorted ingredients on a wooden surface, including everything you need for a fresh Greek Pasta Salad—bell peppers, red onion, cucumber, lemon, parsley, pasta, feta cheese, oregano, honey, kalamata olives, and more.

English cucumbers (also sold as hothouse or seedless) don’t need to be peeled or seeded
Buy feta as a block packed in liquid and crumble it by hand. Pre-crumbled feta in a tub is dried out by design so the crumbles don’t stick together in the package. It disappears into the salad instead of holding its shape on top.
The corkscrew shape of rotini catches dressing in all its grooves the way smoother pasta shapes can’t. If you swap to penne or farfalle, the dressing slides off and the salad ends up under-seasoned. It’s the same reason a spiral shape shows up in my chicken bacon ranch pasta salad and dill pickle pasta salad.
Buy the olives already pitted. The savings on whole olives isn’t worth the time, and an unpitted kalamata in a finished salad is a guest complaint waiting to happen.

Don’t Skip This

The cold-water soak in the recipe is what takes the harsh bite out of raw red onion without softening the crunch. Onion left raw will be the first thing anyone tastes.

Serving Suggestions

Right before you serve, stir the salad from the bottom of the bowl. During the chill, the dressing settles toward the bottom, so what can look like a slightly dry salad from the top is actually a fully dressed salad with the vinaigrette pooled underneath. One gentle stir pulls the dressing back up through everything.

Then crumble the reserved feta over the top, after the stir, not before. If you mix all the feta in at the start, the cheese softens into the dressing within minutes and the whole bowl turns a uniform pale color.

The dressing may taste stronger than expected before it chills. Once the pasta absorbs the vinaigrette for a couple of hours, the garlic, lemon, and oregano settle into the salad and taste much more balanced.

Storage Guidance

This salad keeps for 3 days in a covered container in the fridge. Past that, the vegetables soften enough that the texture goes off, even if the flavor still tastes fine.

On day 2 and day 3, the olive oil in the dressing will look thick and cloudy from the cold, which can make the salad look dry. It isn’t. Pull the bowl out of the fridge 15 minutes before you serve so the can oil warm back up.

If the salad genuinely does look dry, a little olive oil and red wine vinegar drizzled over the top and stirred in will bring it back. The pasta soaks up the new dressing the same way it soaked up the original.

Do not freeze this salad.

A wooden bowl filled with Greek Pasta Salad made of rotini, cherry tomatoes, cucumber, green bell pepper, Kalamata olives, red onion, and feta cheese sits on a wooden table with fresh herbs and vegetables nearby.

I first published this recipe in April 2021. Following a recipe test by my independent recipe tester, Angela, I updated my recipe to have more dressing and less onion. I also changed the way the tomatoes are cut.

Summer is approaching fast, and cold pasta salads are all the rage when the weather is hot. A few of my all-time favorites are my Italian pasta salad and BLT pasta salad.

Greek Pasta Salad

5 from 3 votes

Plenty of fresh veggies mixed with salty feta cheese and perfectly tender rotini pasta make this the perfect Greek pasta salad.

Prep Time 10

Cook Time 7

Total Time 2 17

Servings

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Ingredients

3 tablespoons red wine vinegar, plus 2 teaspoons
½ cup olive oil
3 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
4 to 5 fresh garlic cloves, minced
1 teaspoon oregano
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon black pepper
16 ounces rotini pasta
½ English cucumber, cut lengthwise and then sliced across (half-moons)
½ cup yellow bell pepper, seeded and cut into bite-size pieces
½ cup red bell pepper, seeded and cut into bite-size pieces
1 cup red onion, sliced (soaked in 1 cup cold salt water to reduce the “bite”)
1 cup kalamata olives, sliced and pitted
2 cups grape tomatoes, halved
5 ounces Feta cheese, crumbled

Instructions

In a small jar or bowl, make the dressing by combining the red wine vinegar, olive oil, lemon juice, oregano, salt, black pepper, and garlic cloves. Set aside.
Boil the pasta until al dente, approximately 7 minutes (be very careful not to overcook the pasta). Drain and immediately rinse with cold water to prevent further cooking.
Chop all of your vegetables.
In a large bowl, combine the vegetables, feta cheese, and dressing. Before adding the dressing, shake or stir it well.
Add the rotini pasta and stir until well combined.
Cover and store in the refrigerator for at least 2 hours or even overnight.

Notes

Al dente pasta is the ideal consistency for this salad. The pasta will be tender and will still have a slightly firm texture when you bite into it.
Before adding the dressing, make sure to shake or stir it well.

Nutrition

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Greek Pasta Salad

Read Before You Start