Macaroni salad will always hold a special, close place in my heart. My grandmother (my moms mother) would always make me her super yummy macaroni salad every time I would spend the day at her house, to enjoy a meal with her. She never put many vegetables inside, loaded it up with hard boiled eggs, and focused a lot on making it super thick, with lots & lots of creamy mayonnaise mixed throughout it. There are many varieties of this salad that I truly enjoy whole heartedly , and also love to create. This one, specifically, brings back so many memories for me, while putting a smile on my face in remembrance of my gram! Especially with her being gone, remembering her with the food I create is something she would be extremely proud of me for. She had such a love of food.. along with knowing how much I loved the idea of becoming a chef. This isn’t her exact recipe.. she never showed me it.. maybe because I hadn’t asked her for it lol BUT the texture and taste is a close resemblance of hers. It was so incredible though, that I could never replace it, and actually still to this day, I will crave it from time to time.

This Macaroni salad is simply, marvelous. I don’t even know how else to describe it. It’s easy, comes together quite quickly, and it’s dare I say it.. my favorite cold salad! I think it’s near impossible to have any kind of bbq/cookout without this salad. It should be illegal! HAHA

Let’s get started by filling a tall, stainless steal pot up with water.

You want to make sure your heat is on high to receive boiling hot water to drop your noodles in. When your water does come to a boil, salt it! “Shake your salt shaker, shake your shake your salt shaker!!” ( Speaking of my grandmother.. it’s funny I referenced that because she would actually come over my house with her own salt shaker because she used to tell my mom that ours didn’t pour out fast enough! She was so obsessed with salt.. even though she knew that that wasn’t a good obsession lol.)

Back to salting your water.. you want it to be as salty as the ocean. It gives the noodles flavor that they will never get just by salting the dish itself.

Aside your pot of water for your pasta, you’ll need a smaller pot filled with water to boil your eggs. Put the eggs in the pot before filling it with water!

Here, I’m boiling five eggs. I usually put five eggs to every pound of pasta (which is what I am using) but that decision is up to you. If you guys are anything like my father, you won’t even be adding the eggs at all, which is totally fine.. trust me though the texture is delicious mixed with the mayo. It some what mimics egg salad when you get a touch of the egg in a bite. None of you’s know yet, but you will now.. that is my absolute favorite dish since I was little lol I love it so much!

The easiest, EASIEST way to boil eggs perfectly every single time, is to let the water come up to a full boil, shut the heat completely off, and let the eggs sit in the water for 10 short minutes.

While your pots are getting hot, and things are getting boiled..hop over to your island/counter space, and get to chopping! It is pretty quick, only needing to cut one small red onion, and three nice stalks of celery. Last, cut one lemon in half.

Drop your pasta into the water! Boil for 8-10 minutes.. tasting for an al dente pasta noodle. You’re welcome to use elbows.. thats the traditional thing to do, but you’ll come to find out I am not a traditional girl lol

The BEST part of this Mac salad. The creamy, delectable sauce!

You’ll need to mix :

• Half a jar of good mayonaisse
• Half cup of yellow mustard
• Quarter cup of honey. Sometimes I use condensed milk. I love how thick and Lucious the texture is.. it reminds me of vanilla pudding, but this time I used honey. All depending what I have in the pantry. Some people use sugar in their white sauces for cold salads, but I definitely disagree on that decision, unless using for coleslaw!
• Lastly, add some white vinegar. I splash in about a third cup. All depends on my taste buds that day, and mostly because you want the vinegar for only flavorful purposes, so you don’t want to add too much that it gives the sauce a bite-y sort of taste to the tongue. Like I said before, I love this salad being that it’s super creamy, and you can really taste the mayo! That’s what we want to focus on.

Top off the sauce by adding a squeeze of juice, from half of a lemon. Even though this doesn’t contain seafood, the lemon adds flavor that I can not express, but I really dig it. On the other hand, you very well could add some shrimp, and jumbo lump crab meat to create the most decadence within all macaroni salads, but were keeping it simple for now.

After letting the eggs stand for ten minutes, drain the hot water out of the pan (be careful) 

Fill with cold water and add a few ice cubes, to stop the eggs from cooking any further, and to cool them down quickly, so we can add them to our salad.

Whisk your sauce to infuse all the flavors together.

To the sauce: fold in your the veggies that we chopped up, and add granulated garlic, salt, pepper, dried parsley, and paprika. All to taste. 

The noodles will look soft of texture, but still hard enough that they’re going to have mouth-feel, and keep their shape.

Pour the noodles from the pot, into a colander, and rinse the noodles off in cold water to stop the cooking. Also, we don’t ever want to put hot paste into cold sauce, for cold macaroni salad!

Pour the drained noodles into the bowl with our sauce to mix it all together for a yummy,  creamy dish!

I have mentioned over and over again how I love this salad because it is super creamy, and I swear one of the secrets to that is adding a dollop of mayo to finish everything off, with another dash of salt and pepper.

Peel and chop the eggs to add in with a few shakes of paprika. Paprika in a salad that contains hard boiled eggs is a match made in heaven. Those two flavors are just truly, meant to be.

Yum! SO delicious and satisfying to see. I love seeing little noodles wrapped up in mayo-y goodness because I’ve been in love with mayonnaise since I was a toddler.. you can ask my parents lol

Homemade salads, and rustic food remind me of family get togethers, and farm style ways of eating, so I love that I used this little farmhouse cream bowl with an embroidered cow embellished into it.

I’ll never skip on a garnish, no matter what! Paprika and parsley were calling to this macaroni salad! They’re having a party in this bowl together, and this bowl of pasta will be a hit at your next party!!

For the first time ever on deep fried diamonds, I’ll be coming at you next week with a very very sweet, unique treat. You definitely won’t want to miss this party favor 😉