Avocado Cup Salads with Black Bean Confetti
Adapted from the Smitten Kitchen blog
Inventive ways to create tasty, simple salads packed with veggies and full flavor. You could easily add finely chopped greens to this recipe for added zing!
Makes 8 mini-salad cups; estimate 2 halves or 1 full avocado per person/meal
1 cup black beans, cooked, drained (about 2/3 of a 15-ounce can)
1 large bell pepper, finely diced
1/4 c. finely diced white or red onion
1 small jalapeno, seeded and minced
1/4 cup olive oil
2 T. freshly squeezed lime juice
1/4 t. salt, plus more to taste
1/2 t. ground cumin
Dashes of hot sauce or pinches of cayenne, to taste (optional)
Chopped cilantro for garnish (and/or chopped greens)
4 ripe avocados
Mix black beans, pepper, onion and jalapeno in a medium bowl. In a small dish, whisk olive oil, lime juice, salt, cumin and hot sauce or cayenne. Adjust dressing seasonings to taste. Halve avocados and remove pits. Score avocado halves with a knife, cutting lines in both directions to form a grid, but being careful not to through the skin.
If you’re serving all four avocados right away, go ahead and mix the dressing and salad ingredients together, then heap each avocado half with salad and dressing and garnish with cilantro. If you’d like to stretch this over several days of lunches or the like, keep the mixed salad ingredients and dressing in separate dishes. When you’re ready to eat, cut and score your avocado, dot a little dressing directly on each half, heap with salad filling and drizzle with more dressing. Garnish with cilantro.
Eat with a spoon.
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