I love all things pasta. And this super easy blue cheese pasta salad with blue stilton (or use gorgonzola) is a great example of how delicious and quick it is. I like to eat it for lunch but it can definitely serve as a dinner as well. Since there is not that much vegetables inside I would include a large green salad when serving this for dinner.

What do you need for this blue cheese pasta salad

You need just a few ingredients to get this start, but I will add a few extra ingredients as suggestions later on.

blue cheese of your choice. I like to go for blue stilton or gorgonzola
cherry tomatoes – it’s nice to have different colors but any kind of tomatoes will do
olive oil – the extra virgin kind preferably
sun dried tomatoes – in oil, or soak them before using
pesto
edamame
pasta – I tend to go for the shorter pasta shapes. Think penne or orechiette. I actually used a new pasta shape here. Which is perfect for clinging to the pesto.

You start the blue cheese pasta salad recipe by cooking the pasta al dente. Rinse under cold water and drain the pasta. You can save some of the pasta water to cream to pasta later, although I find this doesn’t work so well for this recipe. But if you’re serving the pasta warm that would definitely work.

Mixing it all up

Take a large bowl and add your drained pasta to it. Now cut the cherry tomatoes in quarters or halves and add to the pasta. You can use different types of blue cheese here but I prefer either Blue stilton or gorgonzola. Both will give a flavorful punch to the recipe. You sprinkle the blue cheese crumbles over the pasta and you add all the other ingredients as well. I do cut the sun dried tomatoes smaller and add a couple of tablespoons of pesto to the recipe. I love pesto as a simple way to add flavor to this simple salad. You can see it as a salad dressing. If you’re no fan of pesto you can use olive oil instead.

In addition to the pesto I tend to add a bit of olive oil anyway to make it a little bit smoother.

Additions

Apart from the above mentioned ingredients there are a few additions that would work really well in this pasta salad with gorgonzola. One would be chicken breast. You can bake that until golden brown and add to the salad, making it a blue cheese chicken pasta salad. Fresh peas are also a favorite of mine to add as well as some chopped up green onions. I added edamame here for some added green.

An alternative to adding the blue cheese crumbles would be to make a blue cheese dressing instead. To do that you mix the blue cheese with your favorite dressing. I like to use a bit of mayonaise to add the blue cheese to and use a immersion blender to make it a smooth mix. A little bit of lemon juice would be great to add to as well as some black pepper. If you’re a blue cheese lover, you’re going to love this blue cheese pasta salad as well.

Anything gets better with bacon

You could also add a bit of crispy bacon or make it into a spinach gorgonzola pasta salad. The spinach can either be raw or cooked.

The salad keeps really well in an airtight container and the pasta mixture can also be added to a green salad to give it a vegetable boost. I like to pair it with spinach as I mentioned above but arugula would also work really well. All in all this is a really versatile blue cheese pasta salad recipe that adapts to your wishes easily!

Also check these delicious recipes with gorgonzola or pasta: