Macaroni Salad With Lemon and Herbs Recipe (2024)

At its' delicious best when chilled for a couple to a few hours. And delicious it is. I was tempted to eat the entire dish all by myself. The 'peel the celery' instruction is a good one. I always do this for use in cold salads of any kind because it makes a difference - here too. I'll use grainy mustard next time and no caper brine. If you're absent buttermilk, I think sour cream could work fine to substitute. This is now in keep and often repeat file.

Swap garbanzos for macaroni. Gluten free!

I learned this recipe from my gourmet-chef mother. I have made this delicious and welcome cold salad (with variations) at least 6 dozen times.I always make a double batch and use sour cream instead of buttermilk.I never peel the celery, and I mix the mayo the night before with 2 fresh large cloves of micro-planed garlic and add all the herbs and chill overnight in a sealed glass container. I only put out one batch because it's usually gone before the party's over and I eat the rest later. Yum

A traditional substitute for buttermilk: using a one cup measure, first add 1 tablespoon white vinegar or lemon juice, fill with milk to make one cup. Let sit 10-15 minutes. Voila!

Made as is except I swapped the macaroni for Yukon gold fingerling potatoes. It made for a really delicious twist on potato salad.

Macaroni salad is the only thing we use Miracle Whip for.

Fold in medium sized seasoned (Old Bay) cooked shrimp into this dish and thank me later.

It can totally sit in the fridge for 2 to 3 days, Brian! And a tip: Take it out of the fridge 30 minutes or so before serving, so it's not totally frigid, and stir in 1 or 2 tablespoons of water just before eating, to get it luxuriously glossy again!

MDS: I suspect you actually got cilantro instead of parsley - they look similar. People who have a problem with cilantro report that it tastes like soap. Try Italian (flat leaf) parsley.

I would just swap in the yogurt in the same amount. It's got the tanginess you're looking for. And if needs thinning I'd add water, lemon juice or cider vinegar. I'm sure it'd work.

Having just made this again tonight for a barbecue on Saturday…just one comment, which applies to most of the great recipes I get from the NYT…could you please start being more realistic about the prep times? If someone can put this together in 25 minutes please send me the video…it takes me an hour and I’m a pretty seasoned cook!

What a light, subtle summer salad. I loved the usage of buttermilk/mayo mix. I left out the pickles due to preference. I served it with cold roasted chicken and grated carrot salad. It’s summer in Houston now. This will be part of my summer rotation.In the future, I think I will use more parsley, though.This will feed a crowd!

My mom always added canned tuna fish and a little pickle relish to her mac salad, which everyone I have served it to since thinks is crazy. But that's the family recipe. I also like adding tarragon, for an alternate version. Looking forward to trying this!

Due to quarantine, lack of access to ingredients, & my desire for something non-potato - I used ditalini pasta, for the buttermilk, I had 1/2C low fat milk + 2T buttermilk powder. For the fresh herbs, I used 2 T dried dill, heaping 2T dried parsley and no zest, so just the lemon juice from a bottle. Everything else as written. All I can say is holy cow! This is amazing! My new favorite - not a fan of deli macaroni salad in general, but this one I could eat in one sitting! THANK YOU!

Made this with vegan mayo, gluten free pasta, and skipped the buttermilk, added a little more lemon to the mayo mix. Really good to have around for afternoon lunch in between zoom meetings.

I made this for an adult potluck picnic. It was great ----- an adult macaroni salad ----- everyone loved it and it was the only dish that had no leftovers. It did take quite a while to make and I felt like I used every pot, bowl, and utensil in my kitchen but well worth the effort.

This was a big hit at my Labor Day cookout. I made it the night before, and it dried out a bit in the fridge despite being in an airtight container. I just added a scant 1/4 cup of mayo before driving to the cookout, and it worked like a charm.

Didn't like the sweet bread and butter pickle flavor, and it had too much lemon - would have been better with a regular, tart dill.

Just made this to take to a cookout this afternoon. I may blow off the event and just sit outside and eat it all day. It’s terrific. Only modification was to add another celery stalk at the end as the two stalks seems to disappear into the assembled salad. And I probably threw more dill in because I always throw more dill in.

Delish! Use less caper brine. Keep the mustard as is. Def. peel the celery! Cook early so that flavors marinade through the day.

This salad was nicely creamy from the mayo which i enjoyed a lot. I can’t handle raw onions very well so i grilled the scallions, gave the salad a nice charred undertone. Tastes just fine without pickles.

I did not have celery so I added grated carrots instead. I used dried dill because that is what I had. Added lemon juice.

Made today. Follow the recipe, very tasty, Plan on making it again for a gathering soon, hoping as it sits the ingredients Marry and it tastes even better tomorrow.

Made this tonight for the first time. Cut it in half because it was only dinner for two (still have plenty of leftovers). It was every bit as wonderful as most review say. I have never cared enough for heavy mayonnaise laden macaroni salad to make it myself (although, of course. This was so tempting given the lighter ingredients, fresh herbs, lemon, and strong reviews. My only alteration was to go light on the caper juice. The caper taste did seem strong at first, but it settled in fine.

How long can it keep? Someone wrote 2-3 day? Could it hold up to 7? Thank you.

This came out really really salty! With all of the bread and butter pickle and the capers, plus 4 tablespoons of caper brine is too much but then to add 2 teaspoons of salt as called for in the recipe, just made it inedible. I couldn’t taste anything besides caper brine, nothing else in the recipe came out in the end. Disappointed as it sounded like a wonderful recipe. would not recommend it.

Wow. Wow. Wow.

Used Greek yogurt instead of buttermilk and it worked great. Otherwise no changes and it’s perfect. The tip Alexa left in the notes to let the fridge chill come off and then stir in a couple of splashes of warm water to get everything glossy again was brilliant.

Substitute fennel for celery, add a touch of fresh mint

Next time I will skip the sugar. The bread & butter pickles brought enough sweet. Used Kewpie Mayo - it’s the best!