Fiesta Chopped Salad

This fresh, delicious, and super healthy Fiesta Chopped Salad works as a light lunch, side dish, appetizer, or snack anytime. Eat on it throughout the week on its own or scoop it with tortilla chips or crackers.

 

What I Love About Fiesta Chopped Salad

This dip joins our Asian Turkey Meatballs and Bacon-Wrapped Dates with Goat Cheese as a crowd-pleasing appetizer.

For this salad, I wanted the lime flavor to be front and center, plus I wanted to use all kinds of colorful vegetables to make it pop visually. I also needed some black-eyed peas in there for our friend’s New Year’s Eve party that I was taking it to.

What I ended up with was a mild salsa-salad–filled with multi-colored peppers, beans, fresh herbs, and tomatoes. And it only got better the next day! The rainbow of colors makes this gluten-free, dairy-free salad gorgeous!

I’d recommend making this big batch on the weekend and then having it handy for healthy snacks and lunches during the week. The flavors get better as they hang out longer.

Ingredients

For the Salad:

• Green bell pepper
• Red or orange bell pepper
• Jalapeno pepper
• Red onion
• Cherry tomatoes
• Corn, drained (or use 1 cup of fresh corn cut off the cob)
• Black beans
• Black-eyed peas
• Cilantro (sub: fresh parsley)
• Avocado, optional

For the Dressing:

• Lime zest
• Lime juice
• Extra virgin olive oil (sub: avocado oil)
• Minced garlic
• Honey
• Salt & pepper
• Cayenne pepper
• Hot sauce, optional

Tip for Making the Chopping Easier

This isn’t a difficult recipe, but be prepared to chop, chop, chop. I got a new chef’s knife for Christmas that I’ve been waiting my whole life for (I didn’t know I was, but I was). It makes chopping vegetable after vegetable a delightful task as it quickly slices and dices anything in its way.

America’s Test Kitchen, my go-to source for unbiased ratings and reviews of cookware and kitchen equipment, highly recommends this particular knife. The best news is that it’s very affordable on Amazon! I tell everyone to get it.

How to Serve Fiesta Chopped Salad

Serve this salad with your favorite tortilla chips or some sturdy crackers. I actually discovered some very additive, gluten-free crackers at Walmart of all places called CrunchMaster Multi-Seed Crackers that pair perfectly!