Meghan Markle’s Spring Garden Pasta Salad Is a Crowd-Pleaser

In the first season of her new show, Meghan demonstrates two different pasta dishes. My colleague Erin McDowell tried her one-pot pasta, a quick and easy dish that only requires a skillet.

The recipe for the spring garden pasta salad, which also appears in The New York Times, has far more ingredients and steps. According to the Times, the dish was inspired by Meghan’s kitchen garden in Montecito — her star-studded California neighborhood — and the duchess’ “fondness for meals filled with vegetables.”

To make the pasta salad at home, you’ll need:

• 1 pound of rigatoni
• 3 shallots, finely chopped
• 2 garlic cloves, thinly sliced
• 1 small zucchini, diced
• 1 cup of snap peas, strings removed
• ½ cup of green peas
• 1 small bunch of Lacinato kale or Swiss chard, stems and leaves separated and finely sliced
• 1 cup of cherry tomatoes, halved
• 1 lemon, preferably Meyer
• Parmesan or Manchego cheese or both, for serving
• Fresh mint leaves, for serving
• Salt and freshly ground black pepper
• Extra-virgin olive oil

Meghan notes that frozen peas work well for this dish and don’t need to be thawed beforehand.

If you opt for fresh peas instead, boil them in salted water for about one to two minutes until they turn “bright green and crisp tender,” according to the recipe.

Then, drain the peas, rinse them under cold water, and drain again before adding them to the skillet.

The recipe states that prep time for the spring garden pasta salad will take 20 minutes, but it took me at least half an hour to chop, slice, and dice everything.

I should note that I’m not the quickest with a knife and was already pretty tired from a day full of trying Meghan’s hosting projects, so I wasn’t exactly working at full speed.

If you’re also a bit of a novice, make sure to budget enough time before dinner for prep.

I forgot that it can take quite a bit of time to bring a large pot of water to a boil, so I wasted precious time by not putting it on the stove right away as I did my prep work. Don’t make my same mistake!

And, as always with pasta, make sure to generously salt the water.

The recipe says you should add enough oil to coat the bottom of the pan.

Meghan says you should season the shallots and garlic with salt and cook them until they just start to soften, making sure to stir often.

This should take about one to two minutes.

Meghan says you should salt everything again and cook until the veggies are “crisp-tender,” which should take two to three minutes.

I took my skillet off the heat and threw in the box of rigatoni to my boiling pot of salted water, cooking the pasta until it was al dente.

The recipe recommends saving half a cup of pasta water.

Per Meghan’s recommendation, I also added a splash of pasta water since my noodles seemed a little dry.

I added all the cooked veggies from the skillet to the big bowl, then added the halved cherry tomatoes.

I stirred everything together to coat the rigatoni noodles evenly. After tasting my pasta, I added a bit more olive oil and pasta water.

I love Parmesan and Manchego cheese, so I opted to use both for this recipe. I grated a generous amount of each over the pasta, which I topped with lots of freshly ground black pepper.

This is also the step where you can scatter the mint on top — although I must admit I forgot!

After nearly 10 hours of trying Meghan’s various projects, I was pretty exhausted when I finished making this dish. And, full transparency, that tiredness immediately made me not want to like this pasta.

But when I arrived at my friend’s barbecue, I was surprised by how much everyone loved this dish. The pasta salad was packed with bright flavors from all the veggies, perfectly captured in each bite of the chewy rigatoni.

It tasted light and fresh, pairing well with our chicken and steak kebabs. I especially loved the pasta when I added some chili crisp on top the following day. The extra heat, melding with the salty cheeses, added more depth and elevated the overall flavor.

There are a lot of great spring pastas that take much less time and work — I’m partial to Ina Garten’s spring spaghetti carbonara — but if you’re quick with a knife, or have an extra pair of hands to help, Meghan’s spring garden pasta salad will be a crowd-pleaser.