BLT Tortellini Salad – The perfect cold pasta salad that’s great for any potluck, picnic, or your summer barbecues. This tortellini salad will be a huge hit whenever you take it!
It’s finally starting to feel a little like Memorial Day is right around the corner. For a second, I thought no way it was next weekend a week ago. So much rain and now it’s finally in the 80’s with the sun shining. Gorgeous! With the warmer weather comes foods that aren’t too hot – tortellini salads, salads, macaroni salads, kabobs, pasta salads, you name it. And we all seem to love them, at least my family does.
If you have tried my popular BLT macaroni salad recipe before, you are going to love this one! The three cheese tortellini brings this salad into a whole new ballgame, my friends. It’s so good I couldn’t stop eating it when I was mixing the ingredients together. I shouldn’t have had as much as I did because I started the keto diet again. Very low carbs and a lot of fat…yum! But it’s okay because I’m snacking on black olives and dill pickles as I am writing this. Not so bad, right?
This is my new go-to pasta salad dish when we go to BBQ’s and potlucks, or even when we host them at our house. It’s oh, so creamy and not lightened-up like my BLT macaroni salad with greek yogurt; of course, you can substitute that instead for the sour cream. Either way, it’s delicious and will not last very long whenever you serve it.
If you prefer another type of tortellini, they are so many; you can substitute it instead for the three cheese, still delicious. I think the sausage one would be great I saw at the store the other day. It does quite a bit of bacon mixed in already, but as my husband likes to say, “More meat in a dish, the better.”.
- 20 ounces three cheese refrigerated tortellini
- ¾ cup mayonnaise
- ¼ cup sour cream
- 8 pieces of bacon, cooked and diced into small pieces
- 1 large tomato, diced and de-seeded
- 1 cup diced lettuce
- 1 teaspoon garlic powder
- salt and pepper, to taste*
- 3 tablespoons red wine vinegar
- fresh parsley, to garnish (optional)
- Place the tortellini in a generously salted boiling water, reduce the heat to medium, and boil for 7-9 minutes or until al dente. Drain and run under cold water.
- Place the cold tortellini, mayonnaise, sour cream, bacon, tomato, lettuce, garlic powder, and red wine vinegar in a large bowl and mix until combined. Add salt and pepper to taste.
- Garnish with fresh parsley.
Carla says
June 30, 2016 at 1:10 pmI added black olives and slices of avocado to my tortellini salad. Yum
Chelsea says
July 12, 2016 at 9:14 amSounds like a great addition, Carla!
Karen Olson says
August 1, 2017 at 12:33 amI’m going to make it with small quickly blanched broccoli florets. I’ll let you know how it turns out.
Darlene says
December 27, 2017 at 9:50 amGreat recipe… the crowd enjoys it very much! I take the dressing ingredients and combined them first. Then add it to the bacon, tomato and tortellini, which is then placed on a bed of lettuce.