Butter Bean Salad (Lebanese)

A vibrant and creamy butter bean salad that's perfect as a side or appetizer. The large white beans are tossed through a herb, lemon and garlic dressing.

What is Lebanese Butter Bean Salad?

This Lebanese bean salad is known as "fasolia areeda moutabale" or "fasolia abyad moutabale" in Arabic, which translates to "dressed large white beans".

Typical ingredients include butter beans, aka lima beans, tossed through fresh herbs (generally parsley and spring onion) and a garlic lemon dressing or vinaigrette.

This salad is usually served as a cold side salad or as part of a mezze, it's the perfect summer salad!

There are other variations of this salad across the Mediterranean.

Why You’ll Love This Recipe

• Imagine big creamy butter beans marinated in a lemon vinaigrette without vinegar. There is a reason why these beans are referred to as butter!
• You can create a side dish with vibrant flavors from simple ingredients in a matter of minutes.
• Requires minimal thinking, once the herbs are chopped its a matter of tossing everything together.
• Easy to prepare and adaptable, the dressing ingredients can easily be adjusted to suit your taste, if you want it wetter, add more juice and oil, etcetera.
• Versatile - enjoy it as a light lunch, appetizer or as a side. Can also be adjusted to include other chopped fresh vegetables.
• Dietary friendly - naturally vegan and gluten free, soy free, dairy free, corn free and can be made oil free.

Ingredients and Variations

Butter beans (lima beans) can be either dry or canned. If using dry butter beans, they will need to be sorted, washed, soaked and cooked until tender. If you are using canned butter beans, rinse and drain them before making this salad.

Spring onion and fresh parsley leaves will need to be finely chopped. You can swap the spring onion with any type of sweet onion (white/Spanish) which will need to be finely diced.

Crushed garlic clove use as much as you like. I always start with one small-to-medium sized clove and then work my way up.

Freshly squeezed lemon juice is best for dressing up this salad along with extra virgin olive oil, if you are on an oil-free diet, simply leave the oil out. Use as much of these two ingredients as you want. These two ingredients are always found in a Lebanese salad dressing.

Sea salt is added to taste to help elevate the flavoring of all the ingredients.

Optional - freshly sliced chili, I like to use the red variety for the contrasting colors, I especially love fresh cayenne pepper, usually one of these sliced up creates the perfect amount of heat.

Make this more of a meal by adding some of your favorite vegetables such as diced tomato, chopped black olives, or even grated zucchini.

How To Make Butter Bean Salad

Combine Ingredients

Add cooked butter beans, sliced spring onion, chopped parsley and optional chopped chili to a mixing bowl.

Toss with Dressing

Add the dressing ingredients; extra virgin olive oil, fresh lemon juice and salt, over the butter beans and toss until they are well coated.

Serve Cold

Once the butter beans are coated with the dressing, allow the flavors to meld for at least 30 minutes in the refrigerator.

The longer the butter beans marinate in the herb, lemon, and garlic dressing, the better the flavors will develop.