Easy Bean Salad

If you are looking for a way to add more fiber to your diet--which is great for weight loss--beans are some of the foods with the highest amount of fiber per serving.  Paired with a need for healthier options for side dishes during these summer months, I came up with this very easy bean salad that is packed with fiber and quite delicious as a cold side dish.

Let's begin!

Ingredients (8 servings):
-1 can chickpeas
-1 can other type of bean (i chose pinto)
-2 stalks of celery, chopped
-3/4 cup chopped cucumber
-1/2 cup corn (i used on-the-cob, but canned is fine)
-2 green onions, chopped
-1 lemon
-salt, pepper, and garlic powder to taste
-2 tbsp olive oil

1.  First, open cans of beans.  Here, I chose chickpeas and pinto beans.  You could mix and match with whatever beans you like.  Just be careful with the non-chickpea ones because they tend to be a little softer. 

I always rinse and drain canned beans because they are usually packed in a salty liquid that is loaded with sodium.  Even these low sodium ones.


2.  Okay, so while the beans are draining, let's chop!  Here's some celery, which I have cut down the middle to make it a little thinner.  Then just chop them into bean-sized pieces. 

Here's the cucumber, which gives any salad an instant freshening up effect.

I try to make the pieces as uniform as possible.  My mom is big on this. 

While I usually would add raw onion to something like this, I was actually bringing to salad to a friend's house, and we had just talked about how much he hates onions the other day.  Fine fine.  I used green onion instead.  This has the flavor of onions but much less pungent, and more greeny. 

3.  Now, for corn, I decided I would use corn on the cob to add to my salad.  You could totally just used rinsed and drained corn out of a can, but since I had these, I just boiled them up real quick.

I stood them up and stripped them of their kernels. 

Stripping corn.  Sounds rude.

Okay, combine these with the vegetables.

Add the drained beans.

4.  Roll the lemon around on the counter to release the juices, cut in half, and squeeze the juice from both halves over the top of the salad.  Doing it upside-down like this prevents the seeds from getting in there.  But if you have a cut in your hand, you are going to want to die as you're squeezing the lemon.  The choice is yours.

5.  Add salt, pepper, and garlic powder.  Drizzle with olive oil, and toss.  And that's it!

This tastes wonderful as is, or chilled a bit in the fridge.  It'll keep for a while, so you can make this hours (or a day) in advance of when you want to serve it. 

It's a great mix of fresh, citrusy, oniony, and sweet flavor from all the little ingredients.  And I love the variety of textures that you get between the pops-in-your-mouth corn, the tender pinto beans, the snappy chickpeas, and the crisp cucumber and celery.

 
Enjoy!

For a printable version of this recipe, please click here.