A good pasta salad recipe is a handy thing to have in any home cook's repertoire, and there's a handy hack that can help make it even quicker.

It takes time for the hot-cooked pasta to cool down, and one way to do this is to rinse it under cold water. A better method is to use a sheet pan to cool down the pasta.

This hack works well to cool pasta because it involves spreading the cooked pasta out flat, rather than them being all on top of each other in a bowl or pot.

The single layer means that the pasta shapes cool more quickly, and also more evenly. You can then pop the sheet pan of pasta in the refrigerator to help it cool down further.

To stop the pasta from clumping, drizzle a little olive oil on it. This keeps the shapes separate, so that they're ready to be mixed with the dressing and other ingredients.