Black Bean Corn Salad with Chipotle-Honey Vinaigrette

This versatile salad benefits from a zingy dressing -- so much yum!

Black Bean Corn Salad is a familiar, favorite salad of mine, maybe you too. It has been around forever, is easy to make, and variations may be applied to suit your tastes and the ingredients on hand.

This recipe, from Once Upon a Chef, is especially interesting because it emulates the salad dressing used at Chipotle restaurants. I think they achieved that mission muy bien. The leftover dressing is great on a regular green salad too – make it as spicy (or not) as you like. 

So colorful and so darn delicious!

Black Bean Corn Salad works equally well as a meatless main or a side dish. Feel free to bulk it up with chopped meat (chicken or carnitas – yum) or some cheese. Crumbled cotija cheese or a Mexican shredded blend would be nice. 

The salad tastes great even a few days later

My changes:

• We are a ‘No Cilantro Ever’ household so I substituted chopped parsley.
• In a world of avocado lovers, I dare to be different. To me, they’re just meh so I served it on the side.
• Added half a chopped jalapeno (remove the seeds/ribs and taste – some peppers are hotter than others).
• Extra adobe sauce in the dressing. In hindsight, this may have been a mistake as the heat intensifies over time. (Not so much in the bean salad but when using the dressing over greens.)

Note: The recipe has you cook the corn first before cutting the kernels from the cob, and that’s what I did. But in high summer, when local corn is fresh and ripe and luscious, I will skip the cooking step. Mmm, fresh crisp sweet corn.  

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The coronavirus song of the day represents my perspective toward other shoppers when I visit the grocery store, wearing my mask and gloves. Also – why is it so hard for others to understand, let alone follow, the concept of one-way aisles? Perhaps I ask too much.
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To accompany your meal, may I suggest a jazz soundtrack from Coleman Hawkins, legendary tenor sax player. Here’s the tie-in: his nickname was Bean. Okay, that’s it. Enjoy. 
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