Southwestern Brown Rice & Bean Salad: black beans, pinto beans, a host of vegetables that’d be at home in a fresh salsa, plus a copious amount of cilantro.
Southwestern Brown Rice & Bean Salad
6
hearty, dinner-sized portions55
minutesIngredients
- For the salad
1 bunch fresh cilantro
3/4 cup dried black beans
3/4 cup dried pinto beans
1/2 of an onion, unpeeled
2 cloves of garlic, peeled
6 cups water
1 bay leaf
1 tsp Kosher salt
3 cups cooked brown rice (see notes)
10.8 oz corn
1 small red bell pepper, seeded and diced
1 small green bell pepper, seeded and diced
1/2 cup minced red onion
1 avocado, peeled and diced (optional)
- For the dressing
1/3 cup olive oil
2 Tbs freshly squeezed lime juice, or more to taste
2 Tbs rice vinegar
1 Tbs honey
1 clove minced garlic
1 tsp paprika
1/2 tsp cumin
1/2 tsp chili powder (optional)
3/4 tsp Kosher salt, plus more to taste
1/4 tsp coarsely ground pepper
Directions
- Strip the leaves from the cilantro. Wrap the leaves in a damp paper towel. Tie the stems together with kitchen twine and add them to an Instant Pot.
- Place the black and pinto beans, onion, garlic, water, bay leaf, and salt into the Instant Pot. Stir. Set the pot to Pressure Cook, more (25 minutes), high pressure (see notes). Natural release for 20 minutes. Drain, cool completely, then pick out and discard everything but the beans. Place the beans in a large bowl.
- Coarsely chop the cilantro and add it to the bean bowl. Add all remaining salad ingredients (except the avocado) to the cilantro bowl and mix well. Gently fold in the beans. Set aside.
- Add all dressing ingredients to a jar with a tight lid, and shake them up. Taste. It should be mild, but flavorful. The optional chili powder will make it zestier, as will a touch more lime juice. Pour dressing over salad and stir until all ingredients are well coated. Gently toss in the avocado. May be served immediately or stored in the fridge.
- Tastes best at room temperature. Leftovers may need extra dressing.
Notes
- Substitute white rice or farro for all or some of the brown rice. If using farro, cook it according to these directions, but use 1 cup farro, 2 cups water, and 1/4 tsp salt.
- Instead of using dried beans, use 1 can (19 oz) of black beans and 1 can (19 oz) of pinto beans, drained and rinsed, and skip the Instant Pot. In that case, you won’t need the ingredients to season the beans. (You will wind up with unseasoned beans, though.)
- If you want to punch up the dressing even more, swap in apple cider vinegar for the rice wine vinegar.
- I use a 6-quart Instant Pot “Duo Nova.” “Less,” “Normal,” and “More” function differently on different Instant Pot models. On the “Duo Nova,” they function as preset program times when cooking under pressure, and as temperature levels when cooking without pressure. You may need to make modifications for your pressure cooker make and model.
On the Elevated Side of “Everyday”
In a way, it’s hard to describe this as an everyday salad, even though it is the kind of salad I’d like to eat every day. So “everyday” is a good description. But on the other hand, it’s so terrific. If my favorite upscale grocery store sold this salad as a prepared food, I’d be buying it day in and day out. So it’s on the higher, more special side of “everyday,” for sure. If someone told me, “Hey, I made a salad,” I wouldn’t assume is was something this delicious. That elevates it, but with no sense of pretense.
Ingredients:
- In the photos for this post, I didn’t chop the cilantro. The salad looks cool that way, but when it comes to eating it, I’d rather the cilantro were coarsely chopped.
- You might want to ease your way into the entire bunch of cilantro. I like all of it, but you might prefer less.
- I like to make this salad with farro instead of rice, as I did for the batch I photographed for this post. I do love brown rice, though.
Cooking Tips and Tricks:
- Cooking the black and pinto beans together will darken the pinto beans, but they’ll still make a nice color pairing with the black beans.
Leftovers
If you use the avocado, and you know you’ll have leftover salad, I recommend adding the avocado to the individual servings, at serving time.
Other than that, this salad leftovers quite well, even when fully dressed. In fact, I think it’s better after an overnight in the fridge. So much so, that I’m tempted to add that as a step in the directions.
Southwestern Brown Rice & Bean Salad
Credit for images on this page: Make It Like a Man! This content was not solicited by anyone, nor was it written in exchange for anything. References: Greta Podleski, “Brown Rice Cowboy Caviar Salad,” in Every Salad Ever (New York: Clarkson Potter, 2025), 18. Thank you, Kesor. Thank you, ⌘+C. Make It Like a Man! is ranked by Feedspot as #2 in the Top 30 Men’s Cooking Blogs.
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