Black Bean Salad

This colorful, delicious black bean salad works as a side dish at home or potluck dish for gatherings. The simple, zesty dressing brings out the flavor without overpowering the ingredients.

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About this recipe

When we hit the road in our RV, we usually meet up with traveling friends. That means lots of visiting and lots of eating. And some of that eating is in the form of a potluck. We always take a dish that we know we’ll love. Whatever we take has to look good, taste awesome, and be quick to throw together. This black bean salad fits the bill. It also works as a simple side dish to have at home.

Ingredients

• Black beans
• Frozen or canned corn
• Red bell pepper
• Red onion
• Cilantro

Making the Black Bean Salad

Here’s the hard part. Just kidding; there’s nothing hard about this recipe.

Step 1: Prep the ingredients

• Drain and rinse the beans.
• Thaw the corn or drain the corn if you use canned corn.
• Cut the onions into rings.
• Chop up the red bell pepper.
• Mix together the lime juice, white wine vinegar, and sugar to make the dressing.

Step 2: Mix the black bean salad ingredients

• Add the ingredients to a mixing bowl and stir them up.

Step 3: Add the salad dressing

• Pour the dressing over the salad and mix all of the ingredients thoroughly.

Step 4: Serve the salad

After you’ve tossed the ingredients into the bowl and poured the tangy dressing over everything, transfer the black bean salad to a serving dish. Your colorful, flavorful black bean salad is ready to eat!

More good news about this black bean salad

Another thing this salad has going for it is that it’s full of protein. The beans and the corn combine to make a complete vegetarian protein. Read more about that on the Grains, Beans, and Bowls post. And if you’re trying to get more fresh veggies in your diet, the crunchy, sweet bell peppers can help in that department.

It keeps in the fridge through the next day, so if you have some left over, you’re covered for a lite lunch or quick snack.

Tips and substitutions

• Use canned beans or ones that you made yourself from dry beans. Look here to see how to cook dry beans.
• Why cut the onions into rings, you ask? You don’t have to do it that way, but I’m not a big fan of raw onions. I do however like fresh onion flavor. If you cut the red onion into rings, the onion flavor seeps out and flavors the salad. If you like that onion crunch, then feel free to chop it into pieces.
• You can substitute kidney beans for black beans. The reason for using either black beans or kidney beans has to do with the nice color contrast that they provide. Other bean types will taste great in this salad, but black beans and kidney beans look really appetizing mixed in with the yellow (or white) corn and red bell pepper pieces. If you choose to use kidney beans, increase the corn amount to one cup.
• If you don’t have any red onion, you can use onion powder.