Southern Macaroni Salad is a wonderful side dish, not to mention a quick and easy one! I love this for potlucks and BBQ’s as well!

Southern Macaroni Salad

Chief Zookeeper had a craving for Southern Macaroni Salad so we got to work and made some! It turned out really great and it’s going to become part of the salad rotation. It’s a lot more simple to make than some of our other salads so it’s great for a week night dinner.

We added our Almost Fresh Lemonade and Ultimate Classic Coney! It was magnificent! Since it was a little carb heavy, we skipped out on dessert but there were no complaints!

Ingredients:

• small bag of macaroni noodles
• 2 cups mayo of choice
• 3 TBSP prepared mustard
• 1/2 c white sugar
• 3/4 tsp celery seed
• 2 1/4 white vinegar
• 3 hard boiled eggs
• 1 small red onion, chopped
• 3 stalks celery, chopped
• 1 small red bell pepper, chopped
• 2 TBSP dill pickle relish
• 1 small bag frozen peas

Directions:

1. Boil noodles, drain, set aside to cool. If you please, you can add the frozen peas with the hot noodles to help cool the noodles and thaw the peas all at once. Just stir them around and let it sit.
2. Hard boil your eggs. To do so: cover eggs with water about an inch higher than eggs, bring to a rolling boil over high heat. When the eggs reach a hard boil, turn them off and let them sit for 12-14 minutes. Transfer the eggs to a bowl of ice water to cool them. Easiest way to peel that I’ve found is to tap both ends of the egg first to crack the shell, then crack in the middle, roll and peel.
3. In a large bowl, stir together crushed or chopped eggs, celery, bell pepper, onion, and relish. Peas as well if you didn’t mix them with the macaroni noodles. Set aside.
4. In a small bowl, mix together mayo, mustard, vinegar, celery seed, and sugar. Pour over vegetable/egg mixture and stir. Mix into noodles. Set inside fridge and let cool for at least an hour, the longer they cool the better.

Do you have any pointers you’d like to share? What do you serve with yours?