Bean and Vegetable Salad for Winter

This bean and vegetable salad is one of the most useful winter preserves a home cook can put up: hearty white beans with sweet pepper, carrot, onion, and tomato, all stewed down to a thick, almost ragout-like consistency. Open a jar in midwinter and you’ve got a ready dish that spreads onto bread as happily as it sits beside meat or potatoes.

It comes out of the southern home kitchens, where a late-summer glut of vegetables was routinely sealed into jars. The texture depends on one thing — long, unhurried stewing. Over two hours the vegetables shed excess moisture while the oil works into the beans, deepening and rounding the flavor.

Cooking Tips

Soak the beans overnight (start with 3 cups dried, about 600 g) so they cook evenly and don’t stay firm at the center. Blanching the tomatoes and slipping off the skins gives a smoother sauce. For more heat, add a pod of hot pepper or a clove of garlic about 10 minutes before the end. Always sterilize the jars and lids, and once sealed, turn the jars upside down and wrap them until fully cooled — a simple check that the seal held.

Part of Ukrainian cuisine — 288 more recipes in the section.

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