This isn’t your mother’s bean salad – this is bright and refreshing and is a great summer side dish. It can also be a nice vegetarian lunch on it’s own with some crusty bread. If you want to make this ahead of time, don’t add the sour cream to the vinaigrette. Then when you want to serve, whisk in the sour cream and toss everything together.
Cannellini Bean Salad
Serves 6-8 as a side
2 cans cannellini beans, drained
½ pint cherry tomatoes, halved
¼ cup basil, fresh chopped
½ pound green beans, cut to 1” and blanched
1 each yellow pepper
Creamy Vinaigrette:
½ cup olive oil
¼ cup vinegar, red wine
¼ cup roasted garlic, chopped
2 Tbsp. basil, fresh chopped
1 tsp. salt
1 tsp. pepper
3 Tbsp. sour cream
1. Preheat oven to 500º.
2. In a small bowl, whisk together all the vinaigrette ingredients.
3. Cut yellow pepper in half and remove core and seeds. Coat with a little olive oil and roast in the oven until tender and browned. Cool until you can touch it and remove the skins. Dice into ¾” chunks.
4. In a large bowl add the beans, tomatoes, basil, green beans and yellow pepper. Toss with the creamy vinaigrette and serve.
Tools needed:
Measuring spoons and cups
Mixing bowls
Chef Knife
Cutting board
Baking tray
Whisk
It’s time for a summertime salad here at Nano Lodge. And I’m going to show you today how to make a bean salad. If you’ve been following along, you know that I have a Midwest background. And the three bean salad used to show up at picnics and potlucks all the time. And we all kind of turned our nose up at it cuz it’s really like three kinds of canned green beans and some dressing and stuff. Today, I’m going to make it more healthy and modernize it so that you will love bean salad. We’re going to modernize this salad by doing a couple of different things. Uh, one, I’m going to use some fresh green beans. Um, I’ll cut them into bitesized pieces and blanch them so that they cook and they retain their bright greenness, but they have a little bit of crunch to them. I’m going to roast a yellow pepper to bring in some of that roasted earthy flavor. And then we’ve got some nice uh grape tomatoes for some acidity and a little bit of sweetness. We’re going to make a dressing that’s got a little bit of sour cream in it for some tanginess. Um, and it’ll really bring it all together. This salad is fairly easy and straightforward to make. Obviously, we’re starting with some canned green beans, so you don’t have to boil beans on the stove. Uh I think the hardest thing you have to do is blanch the green beans in uh some water um and roast the yellow pepper. Now, you can buy roasted red peppers in the store and you can skip that section if you want and then you have red and green red and green. Might be kind of Christmy. Um and then we’re just going to make a dressing with the olive oil. I’m using the good stuff here. um a little red wine vinegar, salt, pepper, some roasted garlic, and a little bit of sour cream for that tanginess. And then fresh basil is just going to brighten it all up. Let’s take a look at the prep for the salad. I’ve drained the beans. I cut the uh grape tomatoes or cherry tomatoes in half. Chopped up some basil for the salad. It’s also going to go in the dressing, so we get that brightness both ways. I’ve have the yellow pepper um and just rubbed it with a little olive oil. It’s going to go in the oven and roast until I can peel the skin off and let it cool down. We’ve blanched the green beans. And for those of you who may not know, blanching is a process where you uh put a product, a vegetable generally, in a uh pot of boiling water, let it cook, and then shock it in ice water right away and stop it. It turns the vegetables and keeps the nice bright green color and it gives it some good crunch, but it’s not raw, which is great. Then we’ve got our olive oil, vinegar, salt and pepper, a little bit of roasted garlic. Here I use roasted garlic um instead of fresh garlic because I want a little bit more mellow flavor. And then we’ve just got a little bit of sour cream to just make the whole dish creamy and rich but being light and healthy. [Music] Everything is here. I peeled the pepper after it got nice and uh dark on the outside. Cut it up into little bite-sized chunks. Everything else is ready to go. We’re just going to dump it in this bowl and add the dressing. Stir it all up and you’ll be all set to enjoy your modernized and delicious bean salad. [Music] Bean salad’s all finished. It’s beautiful, colorful, it’s got tons of flavor, yet it’s nice and healthy. Makes a great vegetarian lunch. So, thanks for tuning in to Cooking at Nano Lodge, and we’ll see you next week. [Music]
Dining and Cooking