Tex-Mex Salad with Ranch-Style Beans & Homemade Dressing
Make this Tex-Mex salad with your choice of homemade or canned ranch style beans for a quick, flavorful, and healthy lunch, side dish, or light meatless dinner. Take a look at the Quick Heathy Recipes page for more ideas!
How about an “appetite pleasing” salad recipe that’s so good you just may start planning your lunches out as well as your dinners?
After revisiting my healthier American “French” dressing recipe and remembering the salad I learned about in my college years, I realized the salad I mentioned there needed to be a recipe of it’s own! I mean, something I still thought about from that long ago has to be worth it, right?
Tex-Mex Salad with Beans, Tomatoes & Chips
With lettuce tomatoes, onions, olives, cheese, and chips it has the basis of many a good Tex-Mex salad. What sets this apart, in my opinion, are the type of beans added and the incredibly flavorful homemade salad dressing. While you may want to short cut and use a bottled dressing, the experience will not be the same. Trust me on this (plus the dressing takes 5 minutes to make – really).
But of course I had to change the salad from my college days up a bit to make it healthier and easier. First was coming up with a less sugary and oily dressing. Then I only use organic chips to avoid GMOs (why can’t Fritos be made with organic corn? Sigh). Less cheese was next. And finally, I addressed the beans:
I’ve always just bought these special cans solely to make this salad (see? It really is that good.). I have to admit I didn’t look at the ingredients until recently – I know, shocking. But there are some things that are special treats that fall into the 20% of the 80-20, you know?
Anyway, when I looked, they aren’t so bad:
Water, Pinto Beans, Tomato Puree, Blend of Vegetable Oils and Animal Fat(Partially Hydrogenated Soybean Oil and/or Partially Hydrogenated Cottonseed Oil and Rendered Beef Fat), Contains Less than 2% of: Salt, Chili Peppers, Sugar, Paprika, Vinegar, Spices, Onion Powder, Garlic Powder, Natural Flavorings, Soy Lecithin.
But the partially hydrogenated oils, natural flavorings (that I’ve discovered aren’t all that natural!), and soy lecithin gave me pause enough to see if I could make my own version. But still make it easy because lets face it, who’s going to spend a lot of time on lunch?
Plus it would be nice to be able to make this salad whenever I wanted no matter if I had the special beans on hand or not.
Using the ingredient list, a couple recipes I found online , and a can of pinto beans I did create a version I liked. You can see in the photo above that my version on the left is darker and a bit thicker, but the flavor in the salad was really similar.
As far as easy, it’s a matter of dumping all the ingredients (things most people have in pantries: beans, tomato paste, water, seasonings) in a pot, bringing them to a boil and then letting them cool while you make the salad. It adds just a few minutes, really.
Once the salad base is ready, you mix in the beans, chips, and dressing right before eating to keep everything crunchy and fresh.
I think this would make a great mason jar salad with the beans and dressing on the bottom and the chips in a separate baggie. Dump them all in a bowl where ever you are (or mix in the jar if there’s room) and you have lunch!
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Do you have to make your own ranch style beans? No – go ahead and stock up on the cans if you care. But for those who don’t – or want to ability to have this fun Tex-Mex salad whenever you want – the 5 minute homemade version is a great option.
But you do have to make the wonderful dressing – it makes the recipe. The bonus is you’ll have a great homemade dressing to use on other salads, too.
This may take a few more steps than a more basic salad, but it’s definitely worth it – and worthy of it’s own spot on AOC!
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Tex-Mex Salad with Ranch-Style Beans & Homemade Dressing
Ingredients
For Homemade Ranch Style Beans:
- 1 can pinto beans
- 2 tablespoons tomato paste*
- 4 to 5 tablespoons water or to desired consistency
- 1½ teaspoons salt or to taste
- 1½ teaspoons beef bullion
- 1/2 teaspoon onion powder
- 1/2 teaspoon oregano
- 1/2 teaspoon paprika
- 1/4 teaspoon garlic powder
- 1/4 teaspoon cumin
- 1/4 teaspoon vinegar
For Salad:
- 1 head romaine lettuce chopped
- 2 to 3 plum tomatoes chopped (slicing tomatoes work, too)
- 1/2 large sweet onion sliced
- 1/3 cup shredded cheddar cheese
- 1/2 can olives sliced (optional)
- 1 cup crushed tortilla chips**
- 1 can Ranch Style Beans with sauce or homemade version included here
- Homemade American-French Dressing or your favorite tomato-based dressing
Instructions
Homemade Ranch Style Beans:
- If making homemade beans, combine all the bean ingredients in a small saucepan and bring to a boil over medium-high heat. Remove from heat and let cool while making salad.
Salad:
- Add lettuce, tomatoes, onion, cheese, and olives if using to a large serving bowl.
- Make homemade American French Dressing in a blender.
- Right before serving, mix the salad base with the dressing, beans, and chips. Divide into 4 servings and garnish with more chips if desired.
Notes
Nutrition
More easy salads you may like:
Classic Caesar Salad with Homemade Dressing and Croutons
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My homemade ranch style beans are cooking right now. I can’t wait to put this salad together. What a delicious recipe.
Yum! Hope you like the salad!
This recipe brings back fond memories of when I worked with a bunch of sweet Hispanics in Arizona. Once a month we’d all bring the salad fixings and make this in a large bowl. A few differences were: iceberg lettuce was used (because few people used or had access to “fancy lettuce” in the 80’s); Ranch Style Beans (yum!) and an 8 oz. bottle of Catalina dressing were mixed together; cooked and drained ground beef was added; regular Fritos were mixed in, which works since all the salad was eaten. Since then, I have served the Fritos on the side. People can then add them to their bowl – no soggy chips! I will have to try your recipes for the dressing and beans. Have yet to come close to the delicious flavor of Ranch Style Beans. LOL
Oh, this is wonderful to know there is a history of this salad I was first served in college in the late 1980s! I’m with you on the soggy chips, lol. Adding the beed is a nice way to make this a heartier main dish.
Hope you like the beans and dressing (I think my dressing is better than Catalina, and the beans are close though not exactly the same…)
Hi Jami, what size of canned pinto beans? I suppose it wouldn’t matter too much if it was a little less or more. Looks like a great recipe. Thanks!
The standard which is about 14-ounces, I think!
We had the backyard habitat people over as we want to make our garden more pollinator friendly. They tell you what plants are considered invasive in Oregon and Portuguese Laurel is on the list. We planted our hedge over 20 years ago so there is no removing it. We can still qualify as a silver garden so we will still be adding lots of Oregon Native plants to our 1/3 acre lot in Beaverton. I really like the Laurel hedge as it provides lots of privacy to our garden.
Yes, you have to make decisions based on your needs and what you see (as long as they’re still selling it). I’ve never seen wild P.laurel or it taking over areas, so I think it’s pretty far down the list of invasives (unlike purple loosestrife and such). There aren’t many alternatives for evergreen hedges that don’t grow out of control.
Thanks for posting. I used to eat this salad many years ago & forgot what went into it. It is so tasty.
So glad you found it – I agree, simple and yummy. 🙂
Jamie we don’t have any kind of Pinto Tex-Mex Beans here in Beantown. It’s all about Molasses & Steamed Brown Bread ala B&M or Bush’s but none of their barbecued beans sound even close. Have you ever written out that Tex-Mex Pinto bean recipe you cooked up? Like what seasonings & how much, I have to be careful with those sort of ok ingredients & sodium. Plus I grew up on homemade baked beans every Saturday night. So cannned beans maybe OK in Hubs Book ( city boy) but I really like homemade beans. I have a recipe for Texas Honey Beans that uses Pinto Beans (I plan to check out yours too & your retried Beans, store brands make me ill! But would love to try that salad. I will need to adapt a bit allergic to cow dairy, so maybe Vegan cheddar. But hearty salads that Hubs will consider a real meal take a lot of searching. Regards from Boston,MA from MA❤️🙃❤️
I guess I’m confused – I have the recipe for a homemade version of the beans listed along with the salad – did you click on the arrows to view the entire recipe? I think you’ll find what you’re looking for there. I’m totally with you on enjoying homemade beans. 🙂
This looks tasty! Must try this over BBQ weekends. Thanks for sharing!
Ooh, thanks Jami that looks great! I’m so glad you have a recipe for ranch style beans, they are hard to find!
Oh, good – I hope you like it!
If you want to can your own Ranch Beans, here’s a link: http://www.sbcanning.com/2013/10/canning-ranch-style-beans.html
Wow, I didn’t know this!