What Veggie Delights is all about: I’m convinced that I can share with you some really amazing meatless dishes that you will love, even if you’re not a Vegetarian!
This is one of my fallback recipes. When I can’t come up with a new recipe for my Menu Plan each week, I like to toss this one in. It’s so delicious, easy and quick to make, frugal, healthy, and Vegan! I love cold grain salads (pasta salad, couscous salad, quinoa salad, etc.), especially during the summer time! As usual, I tweaked an original recipe to my liking. You can see the original recipe HERE, but I will tell you how I made it below.
Ingredients:
- One box of couscous (I use Near East, since it goes BOGO at Publix frequently.)
- 2 cans of black beans, drained and rinsed (or 4 cups, if you use cooked dry beans like me.)
- 1 -2 cups frozen corn kernels, thawed
- 1 bell pepper (Red makes it look more colorful and prettier. Green is all I had on hand this time.)
- 8 green onions, chopped
- Handful of chopped cilantro (Recipe calls for more, but I think it takes away from the rest of the flavor.)
- 4 Tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil
- Juice of 2-3 limes, depending on how “limey” you want it to taste
- 1 teaspoon red wine vinegar
- 2 teaspoons cumin, plus a lot more to taste (I LOVE Cumin!)
- salt and pepper to taste
Directions:
- Cook the couscous according to package directions.
- While couscous is cooking:
-Combine oil, lime juice, red wine vinegar, and cumin. Mix together thoroughly.
-Chop green onions, bell pepper, and cilantro.
-Add black beans, corn, green onions, and bell pepper to dressing mixture.
-Toss to coat the mixture. - When the couscous is done cooking, fluff it with a fork to break up chunks. Then add it to the mixture and toss to coat.
- Finish off the flavoring to taste. I usually have to add a bit more lime juice and cumin, as well as some salt and pepper. Everybody’s taste buds are different. I like mine pretty strong, so I add a lot of flavoring. You can flavor it to your liking, though!
- Sprinkle cilantro on top of mixture.
- Refrigerate. You can eat it at room temperature, but it’s much better cold. Especially if you let it marinate overnight!
Enjoy!
What About You: Are you a couscous fan?
We had this for lunch yesterday…so yummy! Thanks a bunch for sharing
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Meagan Reply:
July 10th, 2010 at 7:59 am
Yay! Very glad you liked it!
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Looks delish – except for the Couscous part! Ha. I would make it with quinoa instead since I am gluten free (no couscous). I also love cumin. And the red wine vinegar was an interesting addition – I like it too!
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Meagan Reply:
April 26th, 2011 at 8:28 am
@Renee,
It’s a very delicious salad. It would be YUMMY with quinoa. We’ve been living off quinoa lately. He He.
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How do you get your cooked beans to not become soggy when you freeze them?
Maybe I shouldn’t be using the frozen ones for things like this? I love making my own beans, I just have yet to see them not mushy after I have taken them out of the freezer.
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Meagan Reply:
April 26th, 2011 at 8:31 am
@Angela, I make my own beans and freeze them all the time. The main things I make sure to do are that I let them cool off completely. Then I use a salad spinner to spin off all of the remaining water. If you make sure they are very dry, they freeze well. Sometimes they don’t freeze well when there is water left on them. Hope that helps!
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