Apron Free Cooking ~ Black Bean Salsa

By Noel Lizotte

July is here and it’s hot. Sit­ting with your feet in the kid’s wad­ing pool, sip­ping tall iced tea hot. When it’s this hot, I’m think­ing about light and cool meals. Once I get past think­ing about ice cream, that is.

But when you have a fam­ily, you can’t eat ice cream for sup­per every night. So light and cool meals require some thought. I started a list of foods that would be can­di­dates for this week’s menu.

Of course, salad is on the list. So are sand­wiches. But I was try­ing to find some­thing that was easy to eat a few bites now and a few bites later. I didn’t want to turn on the stove or oven. I don’t mind heat­ing the tea ket­tle when it’s 90 degrees, but I don’t want to heat up the whole kitchen.

I found this recipe for a side dish, and decided to use it as a main menu item one night. The beauty of this recipe is that you can eat as lit­tle or as much as you want. I’ve used it as an appe­tizer as well as main dish.

Black Bean Salsa

1 can (16 oz.) Ker­nel Corn

1 can (16 oz) Black Beans

1 jar (16 oz) Salsa

1 Green Pepper

1 small Onion

Drain the corn and beans. Chop the pep­per and onion. Toss all ingre­di­ents in a bowl. Sprin­kle with taco sea­son­ing. Chill in refrig­er­a­tor for 2 hours. Serve.

Make it a meal: Appe­tizer – Serve with nacho chips and cold drinks. Sit on the patio in the shade and nib­ble the evening away.

Side Dish – Serve on some let­tuce leaves beside a slice of avo­cado. Place it along­side a tuna salad sand­wich, and you’ll all set.

Main Dish – Spread on a tor­tilla, add some cheese, avo­cado, slices of grilled chicken and roll it all up. Sup­per stuffed tortillas!

Approx­i­mate Nutri­tional Value per serv­ing: Serv­ings per Recipe: 8, Calo­ries: 101, Fat: 1g, Cho­les­terol: 0mg, Sodium: 674mg, Total Carbs: 21g, Dietary Fiber: 5g, Pro­tein: 5g.

If you want some extra kick in your salsa, add some diced jalapeno or banana pep­pers. For a more col­or­ful salsa, add some red and yel­low pep­pers in place of the green. You can mix up the beans you use too, some peo­ple like to use half a can of black beans and half a can of gar­banzo beans. Sour cream on the side helps cool the spice heat if you get the salsa a tad hot.

The col­ors in this salsa make it appeal­ing, even as tem­per­a­tures rise. A few scoops on a nacho chip will keep you going for a bit, and then you can come back for a lit­tle more. You won’t feel weighted down and overstuffed!

Noel Lizotte is break­ing free of cor­po­rate stress with con­ve­nience cook­ing! This recipe is taken from her cook­book Apron Free Cook­ing which are avail­able on the web­site www.apronfreecooking.com. She also writes a monthly col­umn at www.culinary.net.

Posted by Noel Lizotte on Jul 9 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.