Rocket Pesto Pasta Salad with Chicken and Cashews

Rocket pesto pasta salad is a cold, creamy bowl of pasta coated in a raw sauce of peppery rocket, fresh basil and cashew nuts. Chicken, torn mozzarella and shaved parmesan turn it into a proper meal, and the whole thing takes about fifteen minutes once the pasta is cooked and cooled.

Rocket pesto pasta salad is made with a blended raw sauce of rocket, basil, cashews, garlic and lemon, poured over cold pasta. Nothing is cooked apart from the pasta, and the sauce takes five minutes in a blender. Chicken and torn mozzarella make it a full meal rather than a side dish. It costs little, needs no reheating and holds up in the fridge for three days.

Ingredients for Rocket Pesto Pasta Salad

Quantities are in the recipe card below. Most of this is easy to swap around, so walnuts or pine nuts can stand in for the cashews, and any hard Italian cheese will do instead of parmesan.

• Cooked pasta – Short shapes with twists or ridges hold the pesto far better than long strands.
• Cooked chicken – Leftover roast chicken or sliced chicken from the deli counter both work, and neither needs reheating.
• Rocket – The peppery bite is what separates this from a standard basil pesto.
• Fresh basil – Softens the rocket and brings the sauce back towards a flavour everyone recognises.
• Cashew nuts – They blend down into a creamy, almost buttery paste and stop the sauce splitting.
• Olive oil – A good peppery extra virgin oil carries the flavour, and a little goes a long way here.
• Parmesan – Grated into the pesto for salt and depth, shaved over the top for texture.
• Lemon juice – Cuts through the oil and the nuts, and stops the pesto tasting flat.
• Garlic – Raw garlic gives the sauce its edge, so two or three cloves is plenty.
• Mozzarella – Torn into rough pieces, it adds a soft, milky contrast to the chicken and pasta.
• Salt and pepper – Season the pesto in the blender rather than the finished bowl.

How to Make Rocket Pesto Pasta Salad

There are only two steps to a rocket pesto pasta salad: blend the sauce, then combine everything and let it chill.

1. Step 1: Wash the rocket and basil and pat them properly dry, then peel the garlic. Put the basil, rocket, cashews, olive oil, grated parmesan, lemon juice, garlic, salt and pepper into a blender cup or a food processor bowl. Blend until the sauce is smooth and creamy, stopping once or twice to scrape down the sides. Taste it and adjust, adding more salt if it tastes flat or more lemon juice if it tastes heavy.

2. Step 2: Tip the cold pasta into a large bowl with the chicken and the torn mozzarella. Spoon the pesto over the top and mix until every piece of pasta is coated. Cover the bowl and chill for 30 minutes so the flavours settle and the pasta drinks up some of the sauce. Finish with the reserved rocket leaves, a few basil leaves and shaved parmesan just before serving.

How to Serve and Store Rocket Pesto Pasta Salad

Serve it cold or at room temperature, either straight from the fridge or after twenty minutes on the counter. A rocket pesto pasta salad sits happily next to grilled chicken, barbecued vegetables or a plain tomato salad, and it holds its own as a main course with nothing beside it but bread.

For a lunchbox, pack it into a sealed container and keep the extra rocket leaves in a separate bag so they stay crisp. I take a box of rocket pesto pasta salad to work most weeks in summer, and it needs no reheating at all.

Stored in an airtight container in the fridge, rocket pesto pasta salad keeps for three days. The pasta absorbs some of the pesto overnight, so it can look drier on day two, and a squeeze of lemon juice with a small drizzle of olive oil brings it straight back. Freezing the finished bowl is not worth it, because the mozzarella turns rubbery and the rocket wilts completely. The pesto on its own freezes very well, so make a double batch and freeze half in a small tub or in ice cube trays.

More Easy Pasta Recipes You Might Enjoy

If this rocket pesto pasta salad is your kind of thing, these bowls are worth a look next.

• Start with the classic version, Easy Pesto Pasta Salad — a basil-led bowl made the same make-ahead way, with nothing complicated in it.
• For something sharper, try Pasta Salad with Dill Vinaigrette — cold pasta in a tangy dill dressing that cuts through richer barbecue food.
• When the weather turns, Easy Summer Pasta Salad — a bright, vegetable-heavy bowl that works for picnics and packed lunches.
• If you want something warm instead, Easy Roasted Vegetable Pasta — roasted peppers, courgette and onion tossed through hot pasta.
• And for a heartier dinner, Beef and Asparagus Pasta — quick-fried beef strips with asparagus in a light sauce.

What Rocket Pesto Pasta Salad Costs Around the World

Rocket pesto pasta salad is cheap to make almost anywhere, though the nuts and the cheese move the total far more than the leaves do. I do my shopping in Ireland, where bagged rocket runs a little dearer than it does across the water. The figures below are approximate, based on supermarket own-brand prices for a bowl that serves four.

• United Kingdom – Around £7.50 for the whole bowl, which is roughly £1.90 a serving. Bagged rocket sits in the chilled salad aisle in Tesco, Sainsbury's, Aldi and Lidl, and Aldi is usually cheapest for both the rocket and the cashews.
• Ireland – About €9.00 in total, close to €2.25 a serving. Dunnes Stores, SuperValu and Tesco Ireland stock rocket all year round, while Aldi and Lidl undercut them on the nuts and the parmesan.
• United States – Roughly $11.00 for four servings, so near $2.75 each. Look in the bagged salad section at Trader Joe's, Kroger or Walmart, and at farmers' markets through the summer months.
• Australia – Close to A$14.00 for the bowl, about A$3.50 a serving. Coles and Woolworths both carry bagged rocket, and cashews are far cheaper by weight from a bulk food shop than from the baking aisle.
• Italy – Around €6.50 in total, roughly €1.65 a serving, which makes a rocket pesto pasta salad the cheapest here by some distance. Rucola is sold loose at markets and in Conad or Esselunga, and the parmesan costs a fraction of what it does elsewhere.

Tips and Notes for the Best Rocket Pesto Pasta Salad

• Use fully cold pasta. Cold pasta is the single most important part of a good rocket pesto pasta salad. Warm pasta thins the sauce out, dulls the green colour and leaves the mozzarella looking sad. Pasta cooked the day before and kept in the fridge is ideal, and straight from the fridge is better than freshly cooled. If you are cooking it on the same day, spread it out on a tray after draining so it cools quickly and evenly.
• Cook the pasta a shade firmer. Take it off the heat a minute or two short of the packet time, so it is noticeably firmer than you would serve it hot. Chilled pasta keeps softening as it sits, and it softens again once it has absorbed the pesto. Pasta that was perfectly al dente while hot usually ends up slightly mushy by the time it is cold and dressed. Firm pasta also holds its shape when you mix everything together, which matters with chicken and mozzarella going in as well.
• Take the edge off the rocket. Bitterness is the one thing that can spoil a rocket pesto pasta salad, and wild rocket with narrow jagged leaves is much sharper than the baby rocket sold in salad bags. Start with baby rocket if you are feeding children or anyone who is unsure about the flavour. Raising the basil ratio helps, and so does extra parmesan, more lemon juice or a small pinch of sugar, because fat, salt and acid all soften bitterness. If the leaves are still very strong, drop them into boiling water for ten seconds, then straight into ice water, squeeze them dry and blend as normal.
• Go lighter on the olive oil. Use less than you would for a standard basil pesto. Cashews carry a lot of their own fat, and they release it into the sauce as they break down in the blender. Too much oil on top of that gives you a greasy rocket pesto pasta salad that pools at the bottom of the bowl. Start with less than you think you need, blend, and only add more if the sauce refuses to move.
• Check for nut allergies first. Cashews are blended right into the sauce, so there is no picking them out later, and the finished pesto looks exactly like an ordinary basil one. Anyone with a nut allergy has no way of spotting it by eye. I only make this version when I am cooking for myself, because there is a severe nut allergy in my house. Sunflower seeds or pumpkin seeds blend to a similar creaminess if you need a nut-free bowl.
• Pick a shape that holds sauce. Short shapes with twists, ridges or hollows carry pesto far better than smooth ones. Fusilli, spirali, casarecce, penne rigate and farfalle all work well, while spaghetti and linguine slide around and clump together when cold. I used a short, slightly odd-looking spirali for this one simply because that was what the cupboard had in it. Whatever you pick, keep it small enough to eat with a fork out of a lunchbox.
• Keep the pesto green. The sauce will darken slightly as it sits, which is normal for any raw green sauce. Lemon juice slows that down, so do not skip it, and a thin film of olive oil over the surface of stored pesto keeps the air off. Blending in short bursts rather than one long spin also helps, because a hot blade dulls the colour quickly. Chilling the blender cup for a few minutes beforehand is a small trick that makes a visible difference.
• Season the pesto, not the bowl. Salt added at the end sits in clumps and never distributes properly through cold pasta. Cold food also tastes blander than warm food, so the sauce should taste slightly too strong on the spoon before it goes anywhere near the pasta. Taste it again after the salad has chilled, since the pasta will have taken up some of the salt and lemon. A final pinch of flaky sea salt and a grind of black pepper at the table is usually all it needs.

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Rocket Pesto Pasta Salad with Chicken and Cashews

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Rocket pesto pasta salad made with a creamy blended sauce of rocket, basil and cashew nuts, tossed through cold pasta with chicken and torn mozzarella. The pesto takes five minutes in a blender and there is no cooking beyond the pasta. It keeps for three days in the fridge and needs no reheating, so it works as a make-ahead lunch or a picnic dish.

Prep Time 15 minutes

Cook Time 10 minutes

Additional Time 30 minutes

Total Time 55 minutes

Ingredients

for the pesto sauce

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• 60g rocket (2 oz), about 2 large handfuls
• 20g fresh basil leaves (¾ oz)
• 70g cashew nuts (½ cup)
• 50ml extra virgin olive oil (3-4 tbsp)
• 40g finely grated parmesan (½ cup)
• 2 tablespoon lemon juice, about half a lemon
• 2–3 garlic cloves, peeled
• ½ teaspoon fine sea salt, plus more to taste
• Pinch of freshly ground black pepper

for the salad

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• 320g dried short pasta (11 oz), cooked and fully cooled
• 300g cooked chicken (10½ oz), sliced or shredded
• 1 mozzarella ball, 125g (4½ oz), drained and torn
• handful of rocket (1 oz), to serve
• 20g parmesan shavings (¾ oz), to serve
• A few fresh basil leaves, to serve

Instructions

1. Cook the pasta in well-salted boiling water for a minute or two less than the packet time, so it stays firm. Drain and spread it on a tray to cool completely. Cold pasta from the fridge is ideal, and pasta cooked the day before works perfectly.
2. Wash the rocket and basil, pat them thoroughly dry and set aside a small handful of each for serving. Peel the garlic cloves.
3. Put the rocket, basil, cashews, olive oil, grated parmesan, lemon juice, garlic, salt and pepper into a blender cup or food processor. Blend until smooth and creamy, scraping down the sides once or twice. Taste and adjust with more salt or more lemon juice.
4. Tip the cold pasta into a large bowl with the sliced chicken and torn mozzarella. Spoon over the pesto and mix gently until everything is evenly coated.
5. Cover and chill for 30 minutes. Scatter the reserved rocket, basil leaves and parmesan shavings over the top just before serving.

Notes

The pasta must be completely cold before the pesto goes near it. Warm pasta thins the sauce, dulls the colour and softens the mozzarella. Pasta cooked the day before and stored in the fridge gives the best result.

Rocket can taste bitter, particularly wild rocket with thin jagged leaves. Baby rocket from a salad bag is much milder. More basil, extra parmesan, more lemon juice or a small pinch of sugar all soften the bitterness.

Be careful with the olive oil. Cashews release plenty of their own fat as they blend, so too much oil makes the finished salad greasy. Start with less and add more only if the sauce will not move.

Cashews are blended into the sauce and cannot be removed, so check for nut allergies before serving. Sunflower or pumpkin seeds give a similar creamy texture for a nut-free version.

Stored in an airtight container, the salad keeps for three days in the fridge. Stir through a little extra lemon juice and a drizzle of olive oil before serving leftovers. The pesto on its own freezes well for up to three months.