FCG: Spicy Three-Bean Salad 7/12/07

Greetings Gang! I hope everyone’s summer is going well. Mine is so far: I’ve signed up for a stained glass class which is really cool. Congratulations go to Mitzi of our group on the birth of her son. Always pretty exciting news. I have to admit that I have hated the very idea of 3-bean salad for many years now. I blame it on the trauma of having been forced to eat 3-bean salad from a can at a young age. The particular salad in question consisted of kidney beans, green beans, and wax beans. I blame this experience for my long-standing aversion to kidney beans too because really, there is nothing wrong with a kidney bean qua kidney bean. It’s the wax beans that are an abomination. Few things in nature are so aptly named as the wax bean. It looks like wax. It has about as much flavor as wax. Once canned, it has the consistency and texture of soft wax. (I can’t speak to the texture of a fresh wax bean: I’ve never actually seen one.) The wax bean is a poisonously nasty piece of botanical flotsam and has no part nor portion in my kitchen. Same goes for canned green beans. (Home-bottled I can tolerate much better: less tinny tasting.) Notwithstanding my long-term horror of the dreaded words “three bean salad,” being accompanied by the query “do you want some,” someone recently gave me some that did not contain a single wax bean in the mix. It didn’t even have green beans. It had black beans! I like black beans! I decided to try it and was pleasantly surprised to find that not all 3-bean salads are created equally. Indeed, there are some that are actually edible! Hallelujah! Easy, fast, non-cooking (important in my current humid heat wave up here in the Northeast), and distinctly nutritious. It even redeems the kidney bean from its banishment to the special realm reserved for the inedible foodstuffs (like wax beans). That is a good thing because I was reading on the Internet (the repository of all truth…and everything else) that kidney beans are high in fiber, folate, iron, and thiamin, all of which is important for brain (and overall general) health. So, it is without further ado that I present to you the redeemed 3-bean salad recipe in the hopes that you too can enjoy it. Maybe you can even lay your own 3-bean demon to rest too. Enjoy! - Devon

Spicy 3-bean Salad
1 can (15oz) black beans, drained & rinsed
1 can (20oz, unless you can find 15oz) red kidney beans, drained & rinsed
1 can (15oz) white kidney beans, white navy beans, or garbanzo beans, drained & guess what!
1/2 cup chopped celery (I didn’t add this: I didn’t have any)
1 red onion, chopped fine (I used a Vidalia and liked it)
2-3 cloves of garlic, finely minced
2 jalapeno peppers, finely chopped
1/4 cup fresh chopped cilantro
1 tsp salt
1/2 tsp black pepper
1/2 tsp crushed red pepper
1/3 cup vegetable oil (I used olive and liked it)
1/3 cup vinegar (I used red wine and liked it)
1/3 cup sugar (recipe says you can substitute Splenda) The sugar is actually necessary: do not leave this out.

In a bowl, mix everything up and let it marinate in the refrigerator overnight (or at least for a couple of hours). Stir it around once in a while and serve when you’re ready to eat it. The recipe says that you can also add some sliced fresh mushrooms or cucumber, but I was pretty happy with just the pepper, onion, and cilantro myself. I know I’m usually really down on the canned bean thing (taste metallic to me), but if you drain and rinse them (and then soak them for a bit), it really helps. By the time this has marinated, the dressing has permeated the beans enough to mask the came-from-a-can taste, which is also helped a lot by the cilantro.