If you’ve spent any time here at FoodieLawyer, you know we are big fans of Ina Garten.  The woman is a genius when it comes to food.  She came up with one of our favorite side dishes for homemade Tex-Mex:  guacamole salad.  It’s healthy, fresh and delicious.   A friend of ours who first made this salad for us loves it so much that she would sometimes make a batch to eat for lunch all week.  It’s that good!

The recipe calls for black beans.  If you use canned black beans (easiest and recommended), be sure to rinse them first.  You can just run some cold water into the opened can, then drain it.  Rinse and repeat.

Add the rinsed black beans to a large bowl.

Next add chopped tomatoes.  The recipe calls for grape tomatoes, which are easy to cut in half to get the right size for this salad.

Then add a chopped yellow bell pepper.

Next up — chopped red onion.  The type of onion does make a difference sometimes — if the recipe you are cooking calls for a specific type, it’s probably because the flavor/use will make a difference in the ultimate dish.  Basically, we have found that red onions have the sharpest bite, white onions tend to be a little less sharp, and yellow onions are usually more mellow.

Then add the chopped jalapeno.

Zest the lime before you juice it for the dressing.

Add the zest to the salad ingredients.

Then add the lime juice to a separate bowl for the dressing.

Next add some good olive oil to the dressing.

The other dressing ingredients are minced garlic, salt, pepper and cayenne pepper.  Whisk the dressing ingredients together well.

Toss the salad with the dressing and refrigerate until you are ready to serve.  Just before serving the salad, you’ll add the avocado.  If you plan to have any salad as leftovers, set aside your serving portion from the portion for leftovers.  You only want to add avocado when you are ready to eat the salad, otherwise the avocado will get brown and kind of mushy (a.k.a., gross.)

An easy way to remove the seed from the avocado is to pop a knife into it, then twist the handle of the knife, and the seed and knife will come right out.

Cut the avocado into a grid pattern…

…then spoon out the avocado pieces into the salad.

Gently toss the avocado into the salad to coat it with the dressing, but be careful not to smash or bruise the avocado pieces.  We serve this salad with tacos and other Tex-Mex dishes.