White Bean & Pasta Salad

 A hearty, protein and fiber rich salad, great served as a side dish or as a meal.
Here I used whole wheat penne pasta.

White Bean & Pasta Salad
gluten free option

Makes 4-6 servings

printable recipe

Salad Ingredients:

2 cups cooked small white beans or

2- 15 oz. cans white beans, drained and rinsed (or use Great Northern beans)

2 cups cooked pasta, like penne, pennette or rotini*

1/2 cup cucumber, quartered then cut in chunks

1 Roma tomato, seeded and diced

¼ cup finely chopped red onion or 1 shallot

¼ cup fresh parsley, chopped

½ cup fresh herb like mint or basil, chop or tear

*General rule is that 1 C. or 4 oz. dried pasta will make 2 cups.

For a gluten free option, Tinkyada or Jovial make a variety of gluten free brown rice pastas. Both are available on Amazon if you don’t have them at your local store.

Dressing:

1 garlic clove, minced

1 tsp. Dijon mustard

1 tsp. coconut sugar (or brown sugar)

1 tsp. thyme leaves

1 tsp. salt

¼ tsp. black pepper

3 T. red wine vinegar

3 T. lemon juice

¼ cup extra virgin olive oil

Directions:

In a small bowl, whisk together the dressing ingredients.

In a large bowl, add the salad ingredients. Pour the dressing over the salad and toss. Transfer to a glass or ceramic serving bowl. Chill in the refrigerator for at least one hour before serving. The flavors really come out after this marinates a while.

     

     Although I frequently buy canned beans, it really is very simple to cook them yourself. When cooking for a family, this is definitely more economical. There are various ways to cook beans. I'll just give you the basic approach here for how I cooked my white beans. 

I soaked 8 oz. (1/2 of the package) in 3 cups of water overnight.

Just double this if you want to cook the whole pound of beans.

They should soak for 8 hours.

They will really plump up after soaking and change color.

Drain and rinse the beans a few times.

Add 3 cups of fresh water to the cooking pot, bring the water

to a boil, then reduce to a slow simmer. Add the rinsed beans. 

Cover with a lid but leave the lid tipped open a little.

Slowly simmer for 1 1/2 - 2 hours until beans are tender but not mushy.

The 8 oz. of dried beans made 3 1/2 cups cooked beans.

I put 1 1/2 cups in the freezer (drain the liquid) and used 2 cups for this salad.

You can freeze the extra beans in plastic containers or Ziplock freezer bags.