Off the Menu with Dara can be heard every Saturday from 11 a.m. to noon on News Radio 830 WCCO! See all of Mpls. St.Paul Magazine’s Dara Moskowitz Grumdahl's Top 5 lists here!
I was talking to a callers last week and we got onto the topic of bean salads—which are very healthy, low-glycemic foods that are budget-friendly too. I wanted to get a few of them up on the website, for all of you trying to eat healthy and lose weight and heal your budgets this month. So here they are!
Bean Salad Basics First, we should talk bean-salad basics. Fine Cooking did a great article that explains it all, what you really want to do is start with dried beans, because they’re the cheapest and end up with the best texture, and really hit them with an intense vinaigrette. Anyone who’s got an Instant-Pot is in good shape to make beans from scratch. If you’ve got really hard water you might want to cook them in reverse-osmosis or distilled water. Enough magnesium and calcium in your water can make them tough.
Pink beans with Roast Red PeppersRoasted red peppers go great with beans, and have a nice acid edge, as well as complexity. Use pink beans if you can get them, and pinto beans or black eyed peas if you can’t, and loads of fresh lemon juice.
Greek White Bean Salad The easiest salad you’re ever going to see—just beans, lemon juice, red onions, a couple more things. If you make a whole pound of beans, you can eat for a month. It’s so much food!
Chickpea, Cherry Tomato, Feta SaladA pound of chick-peas, a couple pints of cherry tomatoes and a pound of feta, you’re well on your way to feeding 30—or yourself quite well. I love this salad.
Tuna and White Bean Salad (with lots of red onion)Are you ready to switch up your tuna-on-rye desk lunch for a tuna and white bean salad with red onion? You can shove it into bread, if you must, but I like it for breakfast. Why? Because why not!
Texas CaviarAmerica’s greatest bean salad, I say, is the chopped bell-pepper and black-eyed-pea salad called Texas Caviar. There are no fish eggs involved. I think the joke is that it’s not expensive, and caviar is—but the joke’s on caviar, because most people would rather have black eyed peas.