Black Bean Corn and Roasted Sweet Potato Salad

I know it has been a LONG time between posts but I have been running flat out!  Black Bean Corn and Roasted Sweet Potato Salad is a fresh, healthy, delicious, filling salad that I did manage to pull together in the midst of the chaos however.  I have served it to large groups and smaller groups of friends and it is widely appreciated.

Take me to the Recipe

I won’t say that developing this recipe was without its issues however.  I made it with dried black beans and I do like the texture of the beans prepared with dried beans over using canned black beans.  There is a trade off in time however ESPECIALLY when you decide to add flavour to the dried beans by adding some onions to the cooking liquid.  Sounds like a pretty good idea, doesn’t it?  Spoiler alert…. don’t do that.  It takes a lot of lead time to make this salad with dried black beans.  It takes even more time when you have to strain through the black beans with your hands physically removing all of the onion because it gets super slimy and very icky looking.  The onion absorbs the colour from the black beans and ends up a very unappetizing grey colour.   Yup, did some learning on that one….

If you have time and interest, use dried black beans and soak them overnight.  Then in the morning, drain them and rinse them and boil them with some salt, pepper and garlic until you like how soft they are.  It will take a few hours though.  Then they need to chill before you use them in the salad.  This is something that can be done a day or two before you want to serve the salad if you are organized like that…..

OOOORRRR, you can open a can of black beans and rinse them and use them.  Up to you.

The first thing I do is to make the dressing for the salad.  The longer it sits, the more the flavours meld and the more delicious it becomes.  I use olive oil, red wine vinegar, lime juice, fresh jalapeno, honey, fresh garlic, cumin, salt, pepper.  I add the lime juice, jalapeno, honey, and fresh garlic to the blender first.  If necessary to get it to blend properly, add a little of the vinegar.  Blend until it is nicely chopped up.  Then add the rest of the red wine vinegar and the olive oil and blend for another couple of minutes.  Taste it and season with salt and pepper.  Let it sit at room temperature while you put together the salad.

Boil a couple of cobs of corn and put them on ice to cool them down.  While they are cooling, get a large salad bowl and add your black beans.  Next, chop up some red or yellow pepper and red or green onion and add it to the bowl.  When the corn is cold, take a knife and cut off the kernels of corn.  Break up the corn into small pieces and add it to the salad.

Toss the salad with the salad dressing and place in the fridge for a few hours or overnight.  About 1 hour before you want to serve the salad, peel the sweet potato and roast it in some olive oil and sea salt for about 40 minutes or so.  Remove from the oven and add to the salad.  Toss and add shredded cilantro.  Serve immediately.  Black Bean Corn and Roasted Sweet Potato Salad is a new favourite!!

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