Dense Bean Salads, Hummus Bowls, and 3 Recipes I'm Making This Weekend

Who you calling dense?

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A DBS I made in 2020. A trendsetter? Who, me?!

Sweet dreams are made of beans, who am I to disagree? Last week it was cucumbers, this week it’s legumes — Dense Bean Salads (DBS) are taking over TikTok, and I have no complaints about this trend. It’s plant-forward, protein-packed, vinaigrette-drenched, and you can store it in a deli container all week. Yes, please! San Francisco-based content creator, Violet Witchel seems to be the originator of the trend, which involves creating ‘dense‘ (? but ok) salads of canned beans and various flavor profiles. There’s a steak & chimichurri version, a miso version, and my personal favorite, the grinder one.

We’re in the early-ish stages of this trend, so I look forward to it getting weird and to, inevitably, brands jumping in the pit. Let’s see some Primary Beans DBSes, some Rancho Gordo DBSes. You know Fishwife is gonna find a way to make it about them (and I mean that lovingly). Personally, I’m loving the sheer wholesomeness of this trend. I like how TikTok is just taking vegetables and being like, “what about cucumbers??“ TREND, “what about beans??“ TREND. Somebody at Big Kohlrabi needs to find an influencer to take up that mantle.

I’m excited to share my debut for Serious Eats, where I took a deep dive into the sneezy world of peppercorns to figure out the differences between black and white pepper, learning some useless but fascinating pepper-related trivia along the way. (When the Visigoths sacked Rome, they demanded 3,000 pounds of Black Pepper as ransom. That’s a lot of cacio e pepe!)

It’s a huge honor to write for Serious Eats, the site I look to when I want a thorough, science-backed approach to all things culinary. I’ll be writing more for them in the coming months, so keep your eyes peeled for the byline.

Also this week, I shared one of my favorite weeknight dinner recipes — Ground Beef Hummus Bowls — on Simply Recipes. The next time you find yourself Googling, “what to make with ground beef,“ make this!

I can’t wait to make these things I saved on IG this week:

PHOTO: JULIA GARTLAND • FOOD STYLING: JESSIE YUCHEN for SAVEUR

• They got me good with this pic of a rich man’s ants on a log, aka stuffed celery with blue cheese and olives from L.A.’s Musso & Frank Grill. (via Saveur) This is exactly what I want to nibble on, martini in hand, while standing at the kitchen counter listening to All Things Considered and wondering what to make for dinner (Ground Beef Hummus Bowls, duh!)

• Speaking of beans, it might not be dense, but this ceviche-inspired bowl of beans from Justine Doiron looks splendid. My mind always goes blank whenever I have tomatillos around, and I end up just making a bunch of salsa verde, but this seems like a smart way to handle them.

• Every year, Hazel asks for a strawberry layer cake for her birthday. Sometimes I outsource, and sometimes I try to do it myself. This year, I’ll be making Lisa Donovan’s recipe for NYT. I trust Donovan’s recipes completely, and a good strawberry cake recipe is surprisingly hard to find, so this is quite thrilling indeed.

Big ups to MegAnne for bringing the DBS trend to my attention. She watches the TikToks so I don’t have to! And huge ups to my buddy Miranda for making my new logo and visual assets! The mood board was SQUIGGLES, and she nailed it.