Recipe – Nina’s Bean Salad

This recipe has been floating around in our family recipe box for an unknown number of years. This was a friend’s take on the classic relish style bean salad. The nice thing about the recipe it that is is fast and easy to make and uses common ingredients which most of have in our kitchen and pantry. This bean salad works great as a weeknight side dish. Especially, on hot days since no cooking is required.

This recipe is also very flexible and can be easily supplemented with other ingredients:

• Canned or fresh corn
• Fresh diced cucumber, or zucchini (or other summer squash)
• Fresh herbs (in moderation): cilantro, chives or green onions

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Bean Salad Ingredients

• 1 can cut green beans (14.5 oz / 411g)
• 1 can red kidney beans (15.25 oz / 432g)
• 1 can wax beans (14.5 oz / 411g)
• 1 small green pepper (1/2 cup diced)
• 1 small onion (1/2 cup diced)
• 1 can garbanzo beans (chickpeas) (15.5 oz / 439g)
• 3/4 cup sugar or your favorite sweetener equivalent
• 1 teaspoon of salt (Optional)
• 1/2 teaspoon of black pepper (Optional)
• 1/3 cup vinegar

Bean Salad Directions

• Open, drain and rinse all canned beans and allow to drip dry a couple of minutes in a strainer.
• Wash, clean and dice green pepper into small even pieces
• Peel and dice onion into small even pieces
• Combine ingredients n a large bowl and mix thoroughly

Cook’s Notes:

• I usually skip the salt because canned beans are already high in sodium and, therefore, no additional salt is necessary.
• I am not much of an onion lover, so, I normally only use half the quantity of onion called for in the recipe. I use only about a 1/4 cup of onion.
• This salad can be chilled, covered, in the refrigerator until meal time.
• I generally, use apple cider vinegar for the additional and milder flavor, but white vinegar works fine.