Mediterranean Crunch Dense Bean salad – So Fresh & Delicious!

Hey Friends! This Mediterranean Dense Bean Salad is a total game changer for healthy eating! Packed with plant-based protein, fiber, and tons of fresh flavor, it’s perfect for meal prep, vegan lunches, summer picnics, or as a refreshing side dish. Made with chickpeas, kidney beans, great northern beans, crisp cucumber, cherry tomatoes, red onion, fresh herbs, and a zesty lemon vinaigrette, this no-lettuce salad stays crunchy and delicious for days in the fridge. It’s everything you want in a healthy, gluten-free, dairy-free recipe — and absolutely loaded with texture. Your health focused people will LOVE this!

Mediterranean Crunch Dense Bean Salad
1 can chickpeas
1 can light kidney beans
1 can great northern beans
1-1 1/2 cup diced cucumber
1/2 – 3/4 cup diced red onion
1 pint cherry tomatoes – halved
1/2 cup mixed olives
1/4 cup chopped parsley
1/4 cup chopped mint
Dressing:
1/3 cup olive oil
juice of 1-2 lemons (start with 1 and add as needed)
1/2 tsp oregano
1/2 tsp garlic powder
1 tsp dijon mustard
Salt & Pepper to taste
Rinse and drain all the bean and add to large bowl. Chop and add the cucumber, red onion, cherry tomatoes, mixed olive, parsley, and mint. Make dressing in a separate bowl, whisking to combine. Pour over salad and mix until everything is coated. Chill and enjoy!

***additional notes: I added crumbled feta to the top – DELICIOUS! For another meal I mixed in some warm, grilled, greek flavored chicken along with the feta – it was absolutely wonderful.

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Be Blessed!
Jeni

Hey friends, welcome back to Johnny Food and my kitchen. As a private chef, I am always on the hunt for new recipes for my health focused clients. This can be vegan, pescatarian, this can be gluten-free, grafree, or even those with certain food allergies. The goal is to come up with recipes that are going to be both satisfying while addressing the needs that they have as well as being delicious. I’m actually going to try something new. Who knew that dense bean salads were a thing? I guess I missed it. But I’m seeing them more and more trending, especially among those that are health consscious. So, today we’re going to try a Mediterranean crunch dense bean salad. Does that not sound delicious? So, let’s make this. All right. First, friends, let’s talk ingredients. I have three cans of mixed beans. That’s a kidney, a garbanzo, and a great northern bean. I have a mix of calamada and castle vetrrono olives, some mint and parsley, a cucumber, red onion, two lemons, some cherry tomatoes, and then I have some dijon mustard, some garlic powder, some oregano, some olive oil, salt, and pepper. And that is all of our ingredients for this dense bean salad. I’m starting off with my three cans of beans in the bowl. Now, if you wanted to, you could swap these beets out for different choices. I don’t think it really matters. I just think number one, we need to have chickpeas because that’s going to go really well with the flavors. And I like the color variation and a little bit texture variation between all three of these. So, we’re going to start with that. Now, to that, we’re going to add one cup of chopped cucumber. I think I don’t know if that’ll be half, but I am going to again I’m going to chop these very similar to the size of the beans. I’m going to try to make everything again kind of roughly the same size. So, I will chop these cucumber. And the beauty of this is I mean you could actually just kind of mix all of this together without measuring. I am just going to kind of try to keep track so that I can see how this all works together. So our cucumber and I’m just chopping that in like little cubes. So about that big. And that is almost a cup. I’m going to go ahead and I’m just going to say half a cucumber. And this cucumber was pretty big. So I think half a cucumber works. All right, we’ve got our cucumber ready. Next, I’m going to go in with our red onion. Now, this happened to be a red onion that was already I started slicing off. It was in my fridge. I go through so many onions in the summertime. I’m telling you what. But I’m going to give that, you know, kind of I don’t want it to totally disappear. So, maybe about the same size. I’m thinking. Let’s see if that’s going to be enough. The goal is about half a cup, but I like, again, I like it good. I like me some onion in my salads. I am not shy about the onion. All right, we’ve got our onion. I’m going to go ahead and measure that. That should be less than a cup. All right, let’s see. Yes. So, maybe 3/4 of a cup. I’ve got a little bit more of a cup of the cucumber. Woo, those are strong. So, I’m just going to add those right in. All right. Next, we’re going to go in with our cherry tomatoes. And I am just going to have these. And I actually have a picnic to go to tonight. So, I think um I think I might test it, you know, bring it to an event and then see what people think. I do that all the time. I like to test out my recipes on my friends. And the nice thing about the salad is it will hold up to the heat. So I mean since there’s nothing that um I mean it’s not really going to go bad. I mean these are just vegetables and oil and lemon juice, spices, beans. I mean there’s nothing that’s temperature sensitive. So this is perfect to take on a hot day to a picnic or an outdoor event. as well as it’s going to keep really nicely in the fridge. So, this is a great meal prep salad. All right, we’ve got our cherry tomatoes. All right, now the recipe calls for like a half a cup of olives. I kind of love olives. And in fact, Castlevanos, those are my favorite. So, I’ve got a blend of Castlevano and some Kalamata olives. And I’m just going to give each one of those a little chop in half. I think that’ll be perfect. Castlevano olives are so good. I could snack on a jar of Castle Vrono olives every single day. I think together these are gonna Tesla vetrrono olives are kind of meaty which makes them so delicious and the calamata olives just bring that Mediterranean funk like that desirable flavor that you’re looking for in a Mediterranean dish. So I think these are going to be really really good. The beauty of this recipe is that you can really customize it to what you like. Now, I don’t happen to have a red or orange or yellow pepper, but I think that would be beautiful in here, especially an orange or a yellow just to bring in another color and texture, a crunch. All righty, there’s our olives. All right, lastly, I’m going to go in with our herbs. Now, I have here some mint. And I love a good amount of fresh herbs. Actually, the flavor of this kind of reminds me of I mean, the flavor profile, I should say, that I’m creating reminds me of quinoa tibuli that I love to make. That’s one of my most popular, most requested salads. And kind of both in the dressing and the herbs because I use parsley and mint in that as well. So that kind of reminds me I’m anticipating that it’ll taste very similar to that only I don’t add olives. So I don’t know. We’ll see how delicious this is going to be. All right. And I like to just kind of wind it up as fine as I as tight as I can grab it. Try to put it in a ball. And then I just kind of start chopping from there. All right, our mint is ready to go in. Now, the recipe calls for like two tablespoons, and I probably put more like four tablespoons, like a four of a cup, even maybe a little more. But again, I like things a little herb heavy. I am not afraid of the herbs, especially to me since this is so full. This is so dense with beans. I think you need a little more herbs to give that some bright and interesting flavor against those beans. So, I ain’t mad that there’s extra herbs in this All right, there is our parsley. And that looks about the same amount. Probably four tablespoons, maybe even a little bit more. All right, we are done with our chopping. I’m going to go ahead and set this aside and we will make that dressing. All right, I am going to add 1/3 of a cup of good olive oil. We’re going to add in the juice of two lemons. Squeeze those right in there. And I think the I think the lemons are going to work well with the beans. I mean again you have a bright flavor against kind of that dull bean flavor. All right, there is our lemons. All right, to that dressing I am going to add about half a teaspoon of oregano. And again, I’m just going to Whoops, that’s more like a There you go. There’s a half teaspoon. And then I’m going to add a half a teaspoon of garlic powder. And you can also use fresh garlic. I’m actually testing this with a specific client in mind that can’t tolerate fresh garlic. So, I’m going to go ahead and try the garlic powder today. All right. And then we are going to add about a teaspoon of Dijon mustard. That looks like about a teaspoon. All right. And then just a little bit of salt. That was about a third of a teaspoon. I will salt this more um as the salad if it needs it. And then we’ll put some fresh cracked pepper in there. And then we’re just going to give this a whisk right in our little dish. All right, our dressing has come together. So now we’re just going to dump it and mix it all in one bowl. That’s another nice thing about this recipe. I would call it a one bowl recipe. So now we’re just going to take a large spoon and just give everything a mix. Doesn’t that look beautiful? I mean, it sure does look pretty. I hope it tastes good. All right, we’ve got it all mixed up. Boy, that that is looking absolutely beautiful. Doesn’t that look delicious? That’s very pretty. All right, I am going to take some of this. I’m just going to go ahead and add just a little bit of feta right on top and then I will give this a taste. That right there is my lunch today. M I’ll let you know how delicious this is. It looks good. Smells good. All right, I’m going to try to get a little bit of everything in there. A little tomato, onion, olive, bean, feta. Yum. Wow, that is really good. That lemon is very bright against the beans. I can tell that once this sits and those beans kind of soak up some of that vinegrett, it’s going to get even better. Oh yeah. Yes. My clients will love this. I love it. Not only a new recipe for them, but a new recipe for me as well. It’s always good to have a recipe like this in your back pocket so that if you need to come up with something for say a vegan, somebody that’s grain-free or gluten-free, somebody that’s health consscious, this is a great recipe. It’s bright, it’s exciting, and it’s proteinpacked, bursting with flavor. It’s delicious. So friends, if you know somebody that needs this recipe, go ahead and share it with them. Otherwise, like, comment, and if you wouldn’t mind subscribing, I would love it and appreciate it. Thank you so much, and I’ll see you next time. Bye for now, friends. This is really good. Unexpectedly good. [Music]