3 Bean Mediterranean Salad

Hi everyone, yasas, kekalo silsate, to another episode of Dimitra's Dishes. Today I'm going to be teaching you how I make my Mediterranean Three Bean Salad. This is perfect if you like to meal prep because you make a batch of this. It tastes even better the next day as it sits in the fridge and sips in that delicious vinaigrette and everything marinates and absorbs that flavor. So again, it's perfect for a meal prep, but it also tastes good as a main course if you want to eat something light, especially as the weather warms up. This is a nice light lunch idea, but it also tastes good if you want to top it with grilled shrimp or grilled chicken or serve it alongside dinner. Let me show you how I make it. Okay, so we're going to need three cans of beans. So I'm using a combination of chickpeas that are drained and rinsed, butter beans, these are large butter beans, also known as lima beans that are drained and rinsed, and a can of great northern beans. You can use your favorite beans for this. If you'd like kidney beans, that's fine, or if you want to add a few more different kinds of beans. And I'm using canned beans just for ease and to make this recipe really quick. But if you like to cook your own beans from scratch and boil them, you can use those as well. Okay, those are going to go in the bowl, they've been drained and rinsed really well. We're going to finely chop half of a red onion, four scallions are also going to get thinly sliced all the way down to the white parts. We're going to need some cherry tomatoes, they're nice and sweet and they also hold their shape. Cut those into little bite-sized pieces. I'm going to peel an English cucumber and just use half of this for this recipe. Of course, if you want to, feel free to use the whole thing. We're just going to dice it up really small. A bell pepper, any color bell pepper that you want. I have this yellow one, so I'll dice this up as well. Kalamata olives that have already been pitted. I'm just going to chop these up as well. You can cut them in half or into little bite-sized pieces. A quarter cup of fresh parsley, I'm going to finely chop that with some fresh dill. This is all going to go in the bowl with lots of feta cheese crumbled in. We're going to season it with salt and a little bit of freshly cracked black pepper. And now we'll make the dressing. So the dressing is so delicious, it's what makes the salad so good. A third of a cup of extra virgin olive oil is what we're going to be using. About three tablespoons of lemon juice. I have a garlic clove that's already in here. A teaspoon of Dijon or plain mustard. If you don't like mustard, you can leave it out. And we're going to whisk this all up and pour it over the salad. I'll also add in some dried oregano and a little bit of salt and pepper. Mix everything all together until everything is coated and then the salad is ready to serve. And there you have it. My Mediterranean three bean salad is ready. This tastes better as it sits. So if you're making it for like a barbecue or a dinner party, make it an hour ahead of serving it. You can refrigerate it and then take it out and let it come to room temperature. And when you serve it, your guests are going to love it because there's so much bright, delicious flavor in here. You've got the different kinds of beans. The three beans that I used were the chickpeas, the butter beans, which I love. Greek butter beans are the best. If you've tried some of my recipes using them, you'll know how meaty and just buttery and good that they are. And I also use the Great Northern, but you can switch this up, add more beans to it or substitute your favorite beans in here. The vegetables in there are nice and crisp. That dressing is everything. It just tastes so good and brings everything all together. I hope you guys give this recipe a try. You can print it out on the blog, Demetra's Dishes dot com. Thank you so much for spending time with me today. I'll see you all next time. Yia sas!