Black Bean Salsa with Avocado

Delicious black bean salad with corn and avocado! This recipe can be used as black bean salsa for scooping with chips or black bean salad to serve as a side dish or over salad greens for a yummy lunch or main dish salad dinner. This black bean salsa is vegan and gluten free and can be made in advance - just stir in the avocado right at the end.

Because snacks. 

Jay, it should be said, was very misleading about how much he liked sports when we were dating. Looking back, I could have SWORN that he didn't care a ton, was all hippie and cool, cared about random bands and comedians and thought that too much money was injected into sports. He loved golf, but that was different.

Love is blind, people, love is blind. 

Between Fantasy Football/NFL and college, the football time of year has us talking about football daily and watching it several times per week, mind you Jay will claim up and down that he hardly watches it and "most guys like watch so much more, we don't even have CABLE!" The last part is true, we cancelled cable because Jay begged me to.

To get around the sportswatchingthatwedontreallycareabout, I handle The Foods. This is a definitely vegan and gluten free Mexican appetizer, filled with tons of wholesome ingredients and you are definitely not required to eat it with chips. I call it a salsa because it's GREAT with chips, but it's also great cold over rice, as a black bean salad side dish for tacos or burritos, or over greens as a salad. Maybe some feta or sharp cheddar on top, I don't know.

Blender Method

There is a dressing made from some of the fresh tomatoes that go in it to give the salsa something besides "a bunch of veggies chopped up in a bowl," and the whole thing can be made in about 15 minutes depending on how quickly you can chop.

The salsa is also really versatile; you can leave out a veggie or two based on what you have/like, add extra herbs or extra of anything that you LOVE. The corn is fresh from the cob here but you can easily use frozen, and I used canned beans because cooking dry beans takes planning.

Ingredients

Here I used black beans, cilantro, green onion, avocado, tomato, jalapeno, corn, olive oil, lime, sugar, and salt. One tomato is chopped for the salsa and one tomato is in chunks for the dressing. The white part and green part of the scallion are separated, too. 

First, add the beans, chopped tomato, corn, lime zest, jalapeno, and green part of the scallion to a bowl. 

Add the tomato chunks, lime juice, white part of the scallion, sugar, salt, and olive oil to the blender. Puree to make a dressing. Taste the tomato dressing, and add more salt if you'd like. 

Then, pour the dressing over the veggies in the bowl. Depending on the size of your tomato, you may want to reserve some of the dressing for another use to prevent the salsa from being soupy. 

Now, stir everything together and taste it for seasoning. Right before you serve, cube the avocado, stir it in, and salsa is done!

To prep this in advance, make the entire recipe but leave out the avocado. Right before serving, taste for seasoning (probably another pinch of salt!) and cube and stir in the avocado.

I love this because the flavors go together so well and the tang from the lime with the sweet corn and spicy jalapeno is just perfect.

Enjoy this! It's so delicious and versatile, and gets gobbled up every single time. 

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