Variations on a Bean Cheddar Salad with Lime Dressing…

This picture may look a bit cheese-heavy, but it’s really not. It was just the last ingredient I added before snapping the pic, and apparently I could have done a bit more mixing. I’ve made many variations of the original recipe over the years, and I always love it. I’m not sure where I found it at first… the recipe is currently written on a lime-and-oil stained index card. I think that’s the mark of a truly good recipe… where it’s written down is speckled with smatterings of the ingredients used therein. Anyway, here’s the original recipe, source unknown, with a few of my variations to follow:

Three-Bean Cheddar Salad with Lime Dressing

• 1/4 cup Lime Juice
• 1/3 cup Olive Oil
• 1/2 tsp Salt
• 1/4 tsp Ground Red Pepper
• 6 cups Mixed Greens
• 1 can Black Beans, rinsed and drained
• 1 can Cannellini Beans, rinsed and drained
• 1 can Kidney Beans, rinsed and drained
• 3 Plum Tomatoes, diced
• 1 Red Pepper, diced
• 1/2 cup Green Onions, minced
• 1 Jalapeno Pepper, minced (I’m a heat-lightweight, so I substitute diced Green Chilies here)
• 8-oz. Sharp Cheddar Cheese, cubed (Smoked Cheddar or Smoked Gouda is also quite tasty)
• 1/4 cup Cilantro, chopped

1. In a large bowl, whisk together lime juice, olive oil, salt and ground red pepper.

2. In a separate bowl, toss salad mix with 2 Tbsp of the lime juice mixture.

3. Stir beans, tomatoes, pepper, green onions, jalapeno, cheese and cilantro into remaining lime juice mixture. Place greens on each plate, and top with three-bean cheddar salad.

Variations:

• I have really come to enjoy replacing the mixed greens with Brown Rice. In fact, it’s probably been a few years since I’ve made this as a salad with greens. Brown Rice might sound like an odd substitution, but it makes the meal a bit heartier, and also very enjoyable in the wintertime. With the rice, I often warm it up some, just enough for the cheese cubes to start getting soft… Then, it really mixes well together.
• Perhaps somewhat obviously, I usually mix up the bean combinations. With our current bean salad, I used 2 cans of black beans. That was the mood we were in. Same sort of goes for the red pepper… I don’t always toss it in, basically depending on whether I feel like it or not.
• I try to use smoked cheese in this salad. I find the smokiness goes very well with the meatiness of the beans, as a general rule.
• Oh, I have mostly given up on using chopped cilantro here. It seems to drive me crazy during the chopping phase. The leaves get everywhere and all over everything, so I’ve been leaving it out the past several times I’ve made this. Cilantro leaves must have become a pet peeve of mine or something…
• And tonight, we are trying something completely different. To the leftover salad, I will be adding artichoke hearts and whole wheat capellini pasta. We were looking for a cold pasta to go with tonight’s meal, and since we had the beans leftover, we decided to add it all together. I think the artichoke hearts, with their lemony flavor, will go nicely too.