Panzanella Tortellini Pasta Salad

This is without a doubt one of the heartiest pasta salads you’ll ever make. It’s also incredibly refreshing and flavoursome. Sound good? Follow me…

Panzanella Salad

Panzanella is an Italian salad with roots in Tuscany, which at its heart, is simply tomatoes and soaked stale bread. It’s wrapped in a simple oil/vinegar dressing and takes on other gorgeous ingredients such as basil, cucumber and onion.

Stale Bread vs Croutons

The idea with this salad is to use up leftover stale bread. Because the bread has dried out, it’ll soak in the dressing without turning to mush. I have tried this salad with stale bread, but I much prefer toasting the bread to get it extra firm. The more dried out the bread, the more dressing it’ll absorb, whilst still keeping shape and some form of texture.

What kind of bread should I use?

I highly recommend using Sourdough. You need something sturdy in order to crisp up in the oven and soak in the dressing without going mushy. Ciabatta also works well. Soft sandwich bread is not suitable for this recipe. Process shots: dice bread and coat in oil (photos 1&2), bake until light golden and crisp (photos 3&4).

Panzanella Salad Dressing

The dressing is a simple mix of extra virgin olive oil and red wine vinegar, alongside some shallots and garlic. I also love adding in some capers for an extra punch of flavour.

Salting the tomatoes

One tip I picked up from Serious Eats is salting the tomatoes before combing them with the salad. This intensifies the tomato flavour and also draws out moisture from the tomatoes too. This is handy because the juices add heaps of flavour to the dressing!

What kind of tomatoes should I use?

I like using Beef Tomatoes (/Beefsteak Tomatoes) because they hold up really well in this recipe. You can also dice them up really nicely into big rustic chunks. In reality though you can use most types of tomatoes. Just try and get them as fresh/ripe as possible! Process shots: add dressing ingredients to bowl (photo 1), whisk (photo 2), salt tomatoes in colander above bowl (photo 3), toss and leave until they begin to sweat (photo 4).

Panzanella Tortellini Salad

Once the tomatoes have leaked out a good bit of moisture, you can then whisk the tomato juices into the dressing. From there, you can toss in some cooked tortellini, croutons, tomatoes and fresh basil.

What kind of tortellini should I use?

I find that any kind of cheese-stuffed tortellini works really nicely (four cheese, spinach & ricotta etc). You can play around with different flavours, but I’d definitely give a cheese variety a go first.

Soaking the bread

Once you’ve tossed everything together, you’ll want to let the pasta salad rest. This is necessary for a few different reasons:

To allow the flavours to all marry together. Allow the tortellini to soak in flavour. The bread can soak in the dressing and soften slightly.

I find around 10 minutes is all you need. This will allow the bread to soak in the dressing, without turning mushy. The longer you rest the salad, the softer the bread gets. Although this will be dependent on how firm the bread was to begin with. Process shots: whisk tomato juice into dressing (photo 1), add cooked & cooled tortellini (photo 2), add croutons, tomatoes and basil (photo 3), toss to combine (photo 4).

Serving Panzanella Tortellini Salad

After the salad has rested, you can go ahead and serve it right away! You don’t need any sides or anything, this is a really hearty salad that’s pretty filling (and that’s coming from me 😂). For more recipes using tortellini check out my Tomato Tortellini Soup, Sun Dried Tomato Tortellini Pasta Salad and Caprese Tortellini Pasta Salad! Alrighty, let’s tuck into the full recipe for this Panzanella tortellini pasta salad shall we?!