Want to mix up your meals, eat more greens, and transform cheap common ingredients? This vegan dish is light but packed with nutrients and fiber to get you through your day right. Bonus: all the ingredients are inexpensive and fairly common. Get ready for a fresh, simple, creative salad built to impress!
Ingredients
- Beans
- Cucumber
- Radishes
- Bell Pepper
- Kale
- Dijon mustard
- Lemon juice
- Dill
- Garlic
. For this recipe get your favorite kind of white bean. I prefer cannellini. Depending on your choice, the calories and nutrition may change a bit. You can also sub red beans if you prefer.
. English cucumbers are different from your more common grocery store cucumber. They have a thinner skin that’s easier to digest, as well as smaller seeds that help the cucumber taste sweeter. If you can’t find an English cucumber then go ahead and substitute another variety.
. Lacinato kale has darker, thinner, and smoother leaves than the curlier varieties of kale. Because the leaf is thinner it is easier on the digestion and takes less massaging to make easily edible. Although this recipe calls for lacinato kale, you are welcome to use whatever kale you can find.
. Coarse dijon mustard will add greater textural variety to the salad but it isn’t necessary if you already have or prefer smooth dijon mustard. The taste will be the same.
. Garlic paste can be bought at the store, but for a lot less money you can easy shred a clove against a cheese grater with small holes.
Helpful Tools
To make this recipe even easier and faster, consider purchasing a microplane or cheese grater with small holes. I have one and I use it whenever I add fresh garlic in. It’s cheaper than buying garlic paste and way tastier than buying minced and preserved garlic. Another tool that I find essential is a mandoline. If you are like me and want certain ingredients sliced real thin, this item is a must have! For this recipe I sliced the cucumber and radishes with the mandoline and it took less than a minute total, plus all the slices are uniform in width. My only work of caution with this tool is to be very careful using it and to keep it away from children. The slicing blade is super sharp and with a lapse in attention or a finger slid down too close, you can slice yourself. Trust me, I know this from experience. With that said, the last tool I’d recommend for this and really any recipe is a simple cut glove. Cut gloves aren’t well known outside the food industry but they should be in a staple item in any residential kitchen. Wearing a cut glove while working with any sharp tools can be a tremendous safety benefit.
How to Make this Salad
This, like many of my recipes, is pretty straightforward. In a large bowl mix together the drained beans, sliced cucumber and radish, cut pepper, and sliced kale.
In a separate and smaller bowl, whisk or beat together all the dressing ingredients. I would recommend tasting the dressing before tossing it into the salad so you can adjust it if you want to, but remember that it will taste very strong outside the salad. Once the dressing is mixed into the veggies and beans, the flavor will be diluted slightly.
What to Pair it With
To keep the whole meal vegan, I recommend pairing it with my Vegan Tomato Basil Soup. If a fully plant based meal isn’t a goal of yours, you could pair this with a different soup, such as Tuscan Soup, coming soon to Resume Recipes! If the soup and salad combo doesn’t sound appealing, try pairing this salad with my Baked Chicken in Lemon Dill Sauce. Bonus for that last combination is that you can use all your fresh dill in one cooking session.
Kale White Bean Salad
Ingredients
Salad
- 1 15 oz can white or cannellini beans, drained
- 1/2 english cucumber, washed and cut into small pieces
- 4 - 5 radishes, washed and sliced thinly
- 1/2 green bell pepper, washed and cut into small pieces
- 1/2 bunch lacinato kale, washed and sliced into strips width-wise
Dressing
- 1 tbsp coarse dijon mustard
- 4 tbsp olive oil
- 1 tbsp lemon juice
- 1 tbsp fresh dill, chopped
- 1 tsp garlic, shredded into a paste
- 1/2 tsp salt
- 1/4 tsp black pepper
Instructions
- Wash and prep all produce, then combine all salad ingredients in a medium bowl.
- In a small bowl, mix the dressing ingredients until well combined.
- Pour dressing over salad and toss well before serving.
Notes
- You can use a different kind of kale if you prefer.
- You can use smooth dijon instead; the coarse is used to add more texture but either kind will do just fine.
- To make your own garlic paste, grate the clove against a microplane or the side of your cheese grater with the smallest holes.