Ideal as a barbecue side or in a picnic spread, this vegan broccoli Caesar pasta salad is big on flavor. The totally plant-based Caesar dressing features fresh garlic, capers, savory nutritional yeast, lemon, raw cashews, and vegan Worcestershire sauce. Roasted broccoli florets and smoky lentils make this wholesome salad recipe extra hearty and satisfying. Using a high speed blender for the dressing is key and helps to bring this dish together in 45 minutes.
Outdoor dining season simply requires a good pasta salad. A few years ago, I posted an Instagram Reel with a broccoli Caesar-style side dish that racked up a lot of views. I also have a broccoli Caesar dish in my cookbook from 2017! Clearly a combination that I like to play with in my kitchen.
For a little background, the traditional Caesar salad was invented by Italian chef Caesar Cardini at Caesar’s in Tijuana, Mexico. Of course the overall flavor of the much-loved dish is an inspiration for this dressing, but it’s not even close to authentic. I use all vegan ingredients and of course we ARE talking about a pasta salad here.
I generally go for vinaigrette-style dressings in my pasta salads, like in this lemony spring pasta salad. But I was thinking about my previous broc-Caesar connections and wanted to maximize that in a creamy salad. The dressing here is an excellent homemade vegan Caesar option if you want to go classic with romaine and croutons.
Cooked pasta (I like rotini), roasted broccoli florets, and roasted smoky lentils are tossed in that luxurious dressing. The resulting broccoli Caesar pasta salad is familiar tasting but also a bit unique. Every bite is garlicky, bright, rich, smoky, soft, and also toothsome. So good!
Vegan Broccoli Caesar Pasta Salad
Ingredients
Roasted Broccoli & Lentils
- 400 grams small broccoli florets (about 5 cups)
- 3 tablespoons olive oil, divided
- 1 ½ teaspoons garlic powder, divided
- sea salt and ground black pepper, to taste
- 1 cup cooked brown or green lentils (I used canned ones)
- ½ teaspoon smoked paprika
- 1 teaspoon maple syrup
Vegan Caesar Dressing
- ¾ cup raw cashews, soaked for at least 2 hours and drained
- 3 cloves garlic
- 2 tablespoons nutritional yeast
- 1 tablespoon capers
- 2 ½ tablespoons lemon juice
- 2 tablespoons olive oil
- 1 ½ teaspoons Dijon mustard
- 1 teaspoon vegan Worcestershire sauce
- 1 teaspoon maple syrup
- sea salt and ground black pepper, to taste
- ⅓ cup + 2 tablespoons water (plus extra if needed)
Assembly
- 300 grams rotini or other short pasta of choice
- chopped fresh chives, optional
Equipment
Notes
- I don’t recommend prepping this one too far ahead of time unfortunately. The cashew-based dressing just gets totally soaked up by the pasta, resulting in a dry pasta salad.
- Sliced almonds, pine nuts or macadamia nuts are great substitutes for cashews. Macadamia nuts should be soaked for at least 8 hours. Raw sunflower seeds work fine if they are very fresh and you have a high speed blender like a Vitamix.
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 425°F and line two baking sheets with parchment paper.
- On one baking sheet, combine the broccoli florets, 2 tablespoons olive oil, 1 teaspoon garlic powder, salt, and pepper. Toss to evenly coat broccoli. Spread everything out in a single layer and then roast until slightly tender and caramelized, about 15-20 minutes.
- Blot the lentils dry and then transfer to the other baking sheet. Drizzle the lentils with the remaining tablespoon of olive oil and add the remaining ½ teaspoon of garlic powder, smoked paprika, maple syrup, salt, and pepper. Toss to combine and spread the lentils out as much as possible. Roast in the 425°F oven until slightly crisped on the edges, about 15 minutes.
- Make the dressing. Toss the drained cashews into an upright, high speed blender. To the blender, add the garlic, nutritional yeast, capers, lemon juice, olive oil, Dijon, Worcestershire sauce, maple syrup, salt, pepper, and water. Blend on high until completely smooth. The finished dressing should be creamy but fluid and pour-able. Adjust seasoning/add more water if necessary and set aside.
- Cook pasta according to package directions. Drain and run under cold water to cool it off quickly. Once pasta is cooled and drained, toss it with the roasted broccoli, smoky roasted lentils, vegan Caesar dressing, and some extra pinches of salt and pepper. Once combined, serve immediately with chopped chives on top if you wish.
What a creative and incredibly tasty recipe. My family tried it both warm on the day I made it and cold as leftovers the next day. It was surprisingly hard to say which we liked better! I didn’t run into any issues with the pasta soaking up the sauce, thankfully. This one is going into the summer picnic rotation for sure. Cheers!
This was incredible! I’ve made and enjoyed many, many recipes from this blog, but this is probably one of the best. I used bowtie pasta but otherwise no substitutions. I reserved a little bit of the dressing so that I can try to refresh it a bit on day 2 (since you warned that it might dry up). But there might not be much left anyway! =D
(Actually, I might have used a little extra garlic in the dressing!)
Oh my, this pasta salad was a delicious evening experience. Since I had no cashews nor nuts at disposal, I used instead some soy cream which is usually dedicated to warm creamy sauces, and to my very very surprise, it worked perfectly!
I used the same ingredients for the dressing, substituting 3/4 cup of cashews with around 100 g of liquid soy cream. however, I look forward to testing your original recipe, for I’m sure the cashews will convey a greater silky note.
Finally, the contrast between the sweetness of the grilled broccoli and the spicy-crunchy lentils was very satisfying, thank you so much for this new amazing recipe, dear Laura!
This looks amazing. I love the broccoli-Caesar combination and having all the basic food macros in one dish. Can’t wait to try it!
I can tell right now this is going to be great. I am making it tonight. Thank you for taking the load off trying to figure out dinner today! Your flavours are always fantastic.
Just an unrelated observation… it really makes me wonder about my online algorhythm when, as I scroll through this page, I get about ten ads for how to remove my saggy jowls. Makes me laugh!