7 Bean Salad with Chimichurri Dressing ~ why should steak get all the perks? This healthy bean salad takes full advantage of the jolt of flavor you’ll get from my favorite garlicky herb sauce.
Chimichurri + 7 bean salad = the perfect combo!
Since I have so many great bean salads on the blog, and so many of you already love my Mediterranean Bean Salad, I know I have to do something different to grab your attention. Bean salads are generally tossed with an oil and vinegar based dressing, I have no arguments with that. But Chimichurri sauce, the classic Argentinian sauce made with fresh herbs, garlic, olive oil, and vinegar, has a flavor that just explodes in your mouth and really wakes up a bean salad.
If you want to see it in action check out my Chimichurri Shrimp or my Steak Fajita Bowls with Chimichurri Sauce.
Research identifies beans as the key to living longer.
That’s fine by me, beans are one of my favorite foods, and my 7 bean salad with chimichurri is a delicious way to introduce more healthy beans into your menu. Depending on what I’ve got around I will mix canned and dried beans in any number of combinations. This time I cooked black beans and blackeyed peas from dried, while the other beans were canned, or in the case of the edamame, frozen. I especially like the range of textures I get when I mix dried beans with canned, the canned tend to be softer while the dried still retain some firmness
Beans for 7 bean salad
My mix of varieties and a combination of dried, canned, and frozen beans provides a wonderful array of shapes, sizes, colors, and textures…
- dried black beans
- dried blackeyed peas
- canned red kidney beans
- canned small white beans
- canned garbanzo beans
- canned aduki beans
- frozen edamame beans
Beans fill you up and keep you feeling full longer
Bean salad can serve as a side for dinner, or a healthy lunch. And you could do worse than a small bowl of bean salad for a mid-afternoon snack.
Winter eating doesn’t have to mean giving up on fresh produce…
My Sugar Bombs™ grape tomatoes come from Mexico and they’re amazing. I can always find great small tomato varieties like this, and cherry tomatoes, at my supermarket all year round. I use them raw but often cook them, which pulls even more flavor out. I’ll use them for my Easy Whitefish with Burst Cherry Tomatoes and Basil and my Bucatini with Burst Tomatoes at least one or twice every winter. The colors are stunning!
Colorful peppers are always available year round, and if you buy bags of mini peppers, you’ll get multiple colors to play with.
7 Bean Salad with Chimichurri
Ingredients
dressing
salad
- 1 cup cooked or canned black beans
- 1 cup cooked or canned blackeyed peas
- 1 cup cooked or canned red kidney beans
- 1 cup cooked or canned small white beans
- 1 cup cooked or canned garbanzo beans
- 1 cup cooked or canned aduki beans
- 1 cup frozen edamame beans, defrosted
- 1/2 cup finely chopped red onion
- 1/2 cup finely chopped colorful bell peppers
- 1/2 cup finely chopped tomatoes
- salt and fresh cracked black pepper to taste
Instructions
- Add all the salad ingredients to a large bowl and toss with enough chimichurri sauce to moisten everything, but not drown it.
- Chill the salad, covered, until ready to serve. Toss with a little more dressing before serving if needed.
- The salad will keep several days in the refrigerator.
Notes
Nutrition
Do you need to cook the edamame before tossing with the salad? I thought raw soy was not a good thing.
There’s confusion on this issue, but most sources I checked say it’s fine to eat frozen shelled edamame beans without further cooking. Frozen edamame beans are already partially cooked before they are frozen. If you feel better you can heat them up in the microwave and then cool before using in the salad.
Non recipe question, sorry! Where did you get those glass jars? I love them!
I use my favorite Weck jars, Tessa. I link to them all the time, they come in lots of sizes and shapes. They’re German canning jars and you can get them on Amazon. (This is an affiliate link)
What brand black bean do you use? I’ve tried several canned and dried, but they’re always a purplish brown color. Thanks for the recipe! It looks delicious.
I know just what you mean Donna, and when I have the time I cook my black beans from dried, which I did for this salad. I generally buy S&W beans but the black ones are disappointing.