Tuesday, April 15, 2014

Southwest Black Bean Pasta Salad


Spring is here and summer is just around the corner! I love salads - potlucks through the summer are my favorite since there are usually so many salads to choose from. It is no surprise to my family to have a salad of some kind
on the menu most nights during the summer. Many times, I let it be the main dish. Since we eat lots of salads, I like to have a lot of recipes to rotate through. Here is a new favorite! I took some of our favorite homemade salsa ingredients and stirred them together with pasta then I created a dressing to compliment all the flavors. I took it to the first potluck of the season and had many requests for the recipe. I hope your family and friends enjoy it as much as mine do.


Southwest Black Bean Pasta Salad

Ingredients:
8 oz salad pasta of your choice, cooked
2–3 large tomatoes, chopped
½ cup chopped green onion
½ cup chopped green pepper
3 cups cooked black beans
1 ½ cups frozen corn, thawed

Dressing:
¼ cup lemon or lime juice
¼ cup vegetable oil
4–5 Tbsp chopped cilantro
1–2 tsp minced garlic
⅛ tsp cayenne pepper
⅛ tsp cumin
Salt to taste


Combine pasta, tomatoes, green onions, green pepper, and black beans in a large bowl.  In a small bowl, combine the dressing ingredients. Drizzle over salad and toss to combine before serving.

2 comments:

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  2. This salad appeals to me, will be trying it soon! Thank you.

    Since dry beans are such a nutritional boost for our storage, we use them often......
    I had a hard time getting my autistic son to eat beans, so we started trying more recipes with beans until we found some he liked.....I kept this up for years until I had at least ONE recipe for every type of bean we store that I could get him to try!. He still won't eat garbanzos, red lentils, green lentils, and might try navy beans if I could find a recipe he will eat....but he doesn't like sweet beans, so Boston beans are out.

    The results:
    Brown lentil/chorizo tacos
    Red bean chili with extra meat (was using only 1/2 lb. of ground beef origianlly)
    Black beans n' sausage over rice, with cheese
    White Bean chicken chili with medley of mexican peppers
    Buttered baby Lima beans with or without ham
    Crockpot refried Pinto beans for burritos
    Rajma (an Indian kidney bean dish)

    We also make:
    Red lentil/bottled tomato italian soup
    Boston Beans (navy beans)
    Lentil onion soup (green lentils)
    Garbanzo Italian salad
    Mexi lentil n' brown rice mix for many a meal (brown lentils), but especially like Taco soup with this mixture
    Smoky red beans n' rice
    Black bean n' chicken quesadillas
    TCT's (flat flour tortillas smothered in crockpot refrieds, cheese, salsa, sr cream, etc....sort of a Mexican pizza on flour tortillas)
    Green lentil pasta salad
    Heavenly White bean soup
    Layered dinner bean dip with Tortilla chips......I found stirring green salsa into the crockpot refrieds, then the other layers on top of that eliminated the meat layer for us.

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