Healthy Bean Recipes and Cooking Tips

Featured Recipes

Taco Salad

A super-quick blend of reduced-fat sour cream and salsa serves double duty as salad dressing and seasoning for the meat in our updated version of Tex-Mex taco salad. Depending on the type of salsa you use, the salad will vary in heat. We keep this version light with lean turkey, but lean ground beef (about 95%-lean) would also keep the nutrition marks reasonable. Just hold the deep-fried tortilla bowl and instead serve this salad with baked tortilla chips and wedges of fresh lime.

» Taco Salad

Beets & Greens Salad with Cannellini Beans

Sometimes beets in the market have beautiful, unblemished, tender greens attached. When that happens, blanch the greens and toss with beans and vinaigrette, using some of the beets to garnish the salad, as in this recipe. Use the leftover cooked beets for other dishes. If you buy beet greens on their own, you can make the salad just with them. Either way is delicious.

» Beets & Greens Salad with Cannellini Beans

Zesty Wheat Berry-Black Bean Chili

This rib-sticking chili offers a hearty mix of wheat berries, beans, peppers and onion. Feel free to add an additional chipotle pepper to crank up the heat in this one-pot meal. Cooked wheat berries will keep for up to 1 month in your freezer and there's no need to thaw them; just stir them directly into the chili.

» Zesty Wheat Berry-Black Bean Chili

Easy Fiesta Beans

An easy, tasty way to jazz up canned refried and pinto beans for the perfect side to accompany any Tex-Mex meal. Opt for fat-free refried beans and no-salt-added pinto beans to keep this dish as healthy as possible.

» Easy Fiesta Beans

Pork, White Bean & Kale Soup

Kale is matched up here with white beans and chunks of lean pork tenderloin to create a soup that's satisfying and quick to make. Smoked paprika gives the soup a Spanish flair so some warm bread and sliced Manchego cheese would go well on the side.

» Pork, White Bean & Kale Soup

BBQ Baked Beans & Sausage

Here we turn baked beans into an easy main dish by adding chicken sausage and collard greens. Serve with: Coleslaw and cornbread.

» BBQ Baked Beans & Sausage

Middle Eastern Chickpea Platter

This recipe combines the flavors of two Middle Eastern favorites—hummus and baba ganouj—in one easy dish. Serve it family-style, letting diners take their own favorite combination of ingredients. Serve with tabbouleh or a green salad tossed with lemon vinaigrette.

» Middle Eastern Chickpea Platter

Cook up one of these high-fiber bean recipes tonight!

Beans have made their way into a diverse array of cuisines across the globe—from zesty dips to elegant dinner salads—and for good reason. Virtually all types of beans are not only delicious, they’re nutrient powerhouses. On average, just 1/2 cup of beans contains a whopping 6 grams of fiber—that’s about a quarter of the recommended daily intake. So do your body good and enjoy these high-fiber bean recipes.