Bean and pepper salad recipe

Bright green beans and sweet and showy red and yellow peppers. This is much more filling than your average green salad.

Green beans are really low in calories, but they're packed with other nutrients which make them a great, satisfying base for a salad. They're good for your heart and your gut, and best of all: for your mood. That's because they contain folate, which can help to balance hormones that regulate mood. Feel-good food at its best, and one of our great low calorie lunch ideas. Apart from the dressing, this salad only has four ingredients, so it's really easy to pull together. The dressing is vibrant and delicious too, so we recommend making larger batches and keeping it in the fridge to have on all sorts of greens.

Ingredients

• 2 red peppers, halved and deseeded
• 2 yellow or orange peppers, halved and deseeded
• 350-500g green beans
• 140-200g bag salad leaves

For the dressing:

• 6tbsp olive oil
• 2tbsp balsamic vinegar
• 1tsp caster sugar
• 1tbsp freshly grated ginger

Method

1. Set the oven to 200°C/400°F/Gas mark 6.
2. Place the peppers, cut-side down, on a baking tray and roast them for 20-30 mins or until the skins start to char. Remove the peppers from the oven and place them in a freezer bag. Leave them to cool. Peel away the skins and roughly chop.
3. Cook the beans in boiling water for 4-5 mins, or until they’re just tender. Drain them and rinse under running cold water to cool them quickly, then drain them well.
4. Place all of the vegetables into a large bowl.
5. To make the dressing, mix together all the ingredients and pour over the vegetables. Stir to mix and coat in the dressing. This salad is best served at room temperature rather than chilled.

Top tips for making this bean and pepper salad

Cut the cooking time for this recipe down to 5 minutes or less by using pre-prepared peppers from a jar, or buy them already roasted and peeled from a deli counter. If you want your green beans to be as bright and vibrant as possible, try this simple trick. Once they've boiled, drain and dunk them straight into a bowl of ice water. It brings out their fabulous emerald colour.

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