Salmon Pasta Salad

Smoked Salmon Pasta Salad is about to become your new favourite pasta salad. Savoury smoked salmon, a simple creamy dill dressing, hard-boiled eggs, capers, and red onions combine to amp up pasta salad to a whole new level. You’ll find yourself craving this!

Smoked Salmon Pasta

If you know me, you know that smoked fish and I are tight. If I see it on a menu in nearly any form at a restaurant I order it and I’m rarely disappointed.

In fact, I make my own smoked salmon at home and you can, too, using our How to Smoke Salmon tutorial! I eat it in just about everything when I have it on hand.

But it used to be that when I ran out of my homemade stuff, I was kind of stuck until I made the time to make some more. And then I discovered one of my new favourite pantry staples.

Canned Smoked Salmon

Please allow me to introduce you to Wildfish Cannery’s family of canned smoked salmon products. Holy moly people. This is NOT a sponsored post, but it ought to be! Their smoked salmon is easily the best canned salmon I’ve ever eaten.

They have smoked coho salmon, pink salmon, king salmon, and white king salmon, plus they sell smoked herring, octopus, geoduck, and more! I have a food crush on them.

When you open a can of their smoked salmon, you’ll see immediately what makes them different. There are recognizable fillets of smoked salmon in the can. All you need to do is remove the skin and flake it and it’s ready to go.

Their smoked salmon is so good, it inspired me to up my smoked fish culinary game, and Salmon Pasta Salad was born. I tossed smokey flaked salmon with a pasta and a simple creamy dill dressing, hard-boiled eggs, capers, and red onions.

The result was a smoked salmon pasta salad that is perfectly balanced and 100% irresistible. My husband, the kids, and I all went batty over it.

So obviously, I recommend Wildfish Cannery smoked salmon for this recipe. Other companies also offer canned smoked salmon products, though, and if that’s what you can get, use it!

If you’re a big fan of salmon, I highly recommend trying our Best Way to Cook Salmon recipe as well as our Crispy Skin Salmon with Pine Nuts.

Smoked Salmon Pasta Recipes

Smoked salmon pasta recipes are good ones to have in the back pocket because they deliver impressive flavour with minimal effort. Our salmon pasta salad is a perfect example of this.

If you know you plan to keep the salmon pasta salad in the refrigerator for a couple of days, I highly recommend cooking the pasta al dente. Truth? I always recommend al dente, but most especially here.

This is because of the nature of pasta. Pasta will continue to absorb liquid as it rests in the refrigerator.

This means that if you have pasta that’s already soft going into the fridge, it may become mushy. And who wants a mushy pasta salad? Nobody!

If you love onion, but raw onion sometimes troubles you, use this handy tip to reduce the bite. After dicing the red onion, put it in a bowl of cold water. Let it sit for 10 minutes then strain it through a fine colander or fine mesh sieve. Repeat this twice and your onion should be as mild as a Vidalia!

Brine packed non-pareil capers are what I prefer for this salmon pasta salad. Simply strain the brine from the capers and give them a quick rinse before adding to the salad.

You can also opt to use salt packed capers, but you’ll need to rinse them a little more thoroughly. They’ll be a little more pungent, so you may want to reduce the amount of capers called for in the recipe by half. Taste the salad and add more if you’d like!

Calling all pasta and potato salad fans! I have you covered in abundance for your summer salads! Check out our Spicy Bacon Cheddar Pasta Salad, Dill Pickle Egg Salad, Asian Pasta Salad, Easy Bacon Pea Pasta Salad, Veggie Lover’s Greek Pasta Salad, Loaded Baked Potato Salad, Easy Bacon Broccoli Pasta Salad, and Bacon Horseradish Potato Salad.

Salmon Pasta Salad

To make salmon pasta salad, cook the pasta to al dente according to package instructions. Drain and rinse thoroughly with cold water to stop the cooking.

While the pasta cools, whisk together the mayonnaise, white wine vinegar, fresh dill, salt, and pepper until smooth in a large mixing bowl.

Add the cooled pasta, salmon, red onion, hard boiled eggs, and capers, and toss gently to coat. This is best if stashed in the refrigerator -tightly covered- for at least 1 hour but up to 1 day before serving, but can also be served immediately.

If you do store your salmon pasta salad overnight, you may want to stir in a little extra mayonnaise and white wine vinegar to loosen it back up as the pasta absorbs dressing while it rests in the refrigerator.