Broccoli and Tortellini Salad recipe fail

I love trying out new recipes. I saw one on pinterest that looked like a dish I had eaten that my sister made about a year ago. It took me a long time to get all the different ingredients to make this dish. Savingstar.com had a healthy cash back offer for 20% back on fresh broccoli. I thought this was the perfect time to make this dish so I picked some up some Broccoli at Walmart on Saturday and made this dish last night.

The recipe is called Broccoli and Torellini Salad. You can find the original recipe by AMFC on allrecipes.com at this link Broccoli and Tortellini Salad.

The recipes is :

• 6 slices bacon
• 20 ounces fresh cheese-filled tortellini
• 1/2 cup white sugar
• 2 tsps cider vinegar
• 3 heads fresh broccoli, cut into florets
• 1 cup raisins
• 1 cup sunflower seeds
• 1 red onion, finely chopped

1. Place bacon in a large, deep skillet. Cook over medium high heat until evenly brown. Drain, crumble and set aside.
2. Bring a large pot of lightly salted water to a boil. Cook tortellini in boiling water for 8 to 10 minutes or until al dente. Drain, and rinse under cold water.
3. In a small bowl, mix together mayonnaise, sugar and vinegar to make the dressing.
4. In a large bowl, combine broccoli, tortellini, bacon, raisins, sunflower seeds and red onion. Pour dressing over salad, and toss

Simple enough recipe. I wanted this to be the best it could be so I browsed through the reviews that others had posted who made this dish. I decided to make this as Mom2Be! suggested by following these two different steps she wrote :  

•  Blanch brocolli peices in almost boiling water for about 1 minute, scoop out and put in ice water to shock and produce a beautiful green 
• If you use frozen tortelinni, cook for only 2-3 minutes in not-quite-boiling water- they will be done enough, any longer and they will be mushy and fall apart 

Like Mom2Be! I decided to skip the onion as I am not a huge fan of fresh onions. I like them sauteed or fried.

The other differences I made to the original recipe was I only used 2 heads of broccoli and being a vegetarian left out the bacon. I doubled the amount of dressing. After mixing all the ingredients I covered it and put it in the fridge for about 24 hours. I took it out and stirred it up. Here is a photo right after I mixed it today before dishing it out to sample.

Looks pretty good right? Wrong! Check out the next picture after I took out a bowl full. It was so watery. I should not have doubled the dressing at all!

I hated this dish! I really don't think I will be able to eat any more of this. I might try draining out the extra dressing or simply just throw the whole thing away. I really loathe wasting food. I ate this about an hour ago and my stomach is still queasy. I am hugely picky about the food I eat. This ruined my appetite for the rest of the night.