Here's What You Need For A Traditional Mexican Macaroni Salad

While Americans may be keen on our boxed macaroni and cheese, the little noodles can go in another direction entirely. It's still plenty creamy and has a nice pasta chew, but it's served cold with a bit more depth of flavor. To take a whole new trip with your macaroni, think about using those little elbow pastas to make a macaroni salad. While you can make a simple three-ingredient macaroni salad and even swap out the mayo for ranch dressing, you might want to think about making a traditional Mexican macaroni salad. It has a few more ingredients, but it's still pretty easy to make, and it all blends together beautifully.

Called ensalada de coditos in Mexico, the salad brings a lot of different textures and flavors. It can last up to a week in the fridge, and you can customize it exactly to your flavor profile. The main ingredient is your elbow pasta — or "coditos." Codo means elbow in Spanish, so it becomes the diminutive "codito" to mean little elbow. From there, the salad generally uses ham, mayo, and a mixture of crunchy raw veggies and maybe a bit of cheese and other flavors. It can go creamy and slightly sweet, or salty and spicy.

Mexican macaroni salad is typically served at barbecues and larger get-togethers during the warmer months, but it can be a regular at birthday parties, during the holidays, or served as a course at comida corrida restaurants (which essentially means "fast food," but are, generally, small family-run restaurants that serve quick meals).

To start your salad, almost any macaroni will work, but you'll want something that will hold its shape and not fall apart when you're mixing it into your salad. Because it is refrigerated after mixing, the pasta will dry out a bit and solidify, so you want to slightly overcook your noodles when making pasta salad — a couple of extra minutes should be good.

From there, you'll need some ham, which can be regular chopped deli ham or larger cubes from a whole ham. After that, you'll probably want some mayo, but other creamy dressings will work great, if you have the flavor profile figured out. And if ham isn't your thing, you can use some chopped, cooked chicken breast instead.

Once your pasta is cooked and drained, mix it with a bit of mayo and add your ham. Canned or frozen corn is a staple in most recipes, and you can even roast it or saute it for more flavor. Diced celery will give it a great crunch to play off of the other elements, and chunks of cheese bring more welcome flavor and texture. Just get something that will hold its shape and not overpower the flavor. Finally, you may want to add roasted bell pepper for smoky undertones with a touch of crunch, and pickled jalapeños for some nice heat, and you can even experiment with shredded carrots, chopped onions, and olives.