Corn and Black Bean Salad with Garlic Lemon Aioli

Corn and black bean salad tossed in a flavorful homemade garlic lemon aioli. Enjoy a variety of textures, colors, and flavors.

Salad recipes have a reputation for being the least hearty and comforting. It’s never ideal when you’re left with hunger pangs and wishing you had mashed potatoes with gravy and roasted chicken instead. But this corn and black bean salad changes the game.

The buttery smooth avocado, canned black beans, and crunchy corn and bell pepper will satisfy your appetite with a generous serving of healthy fats, complex carbohydrates, protein, and dietary fiber. The variety of textures, colors, and tangy, savory flavors are also a true delight for the eyes and taste buds.

This is a fast and easy salad to make. Eight simple ingredients, some light veggie chopping, and tossing everything together in a large bowl is all that’s required. You can expect to spend roughly 15 minutes from start to finish, making it easy to sneak in a good serving of veggies on a busy weeknight.

As a quick note, a black bean and corn salad is typically a Mexican-inspired side dish that you can scoop up with tortilla chips or wrap up in tacos. A traditional recipe includes cherry tomatoes, fresh cilantro, olive oil, red onion, plenty of spices like ground cumin and chili powder, fresh lime juice, and jalapeños. This recipe is a little different.

Inspired by my Caribbean-Style Corn on the Cob with an aioli dressing instead of lime dressing, it’s tangier, zestier—with parsley, peppers, avocado, and smoked paprika.

I used Sous Vide Corn on the Cob for this corn salad recipe, but you can use boiled, roasted, or grilled fresh corn or canned corn kernels. Any variation will work just fine.

How to Serve This Corn and Black Bean Salad

This corn and black bean salad makes six servings, so you can serve it as an appetizer if you’re cooking for a crowd (this would be a great recipe for a potluck or BBQ). For fewer people, it’s filling enough to have as a main. You could also add cooked quinoa if you want to make it even more satiating. 

As mentioned above, the all-star ingredient that lends the addictive tangy taste and creamy texture and makes it so yummy is the garlic lemon aioli. Since it’s so flavorful, this salad doesn’t need additional spices or seasonings (except the dusting of smoked paprika as a garnish).

You can use a store-bought aioli, but if you have an extra 10 minutes, I highly recommend making it from scratch. It’s super simple.

How to Make Garlic Lemon Aioli From Scratch

This is one of the most simple and most delicious sauces you will ever make. If you’re in North America, it can be a task to find a true garlic aioli in stores. Most sauces labeled garlic aioli are mayo-based, which is really just garlic mayo.

A true aioli is made with olive oil, a ton of crushed garlic, and sometimes an egg yolk, lemon juice, and dijon mustard. When compared to a mayo-based sauce, you can really taste and feel the difference with a true aioli. It’s lighter, vibrant yellow in color, zestier, and better for you, being olive oil-based. It’s also gluten-free.

To make my Garlic Lemon Aioli from scratch, all you need is a pasteurized egg, crushed garlic, dijon mustard, extra-virgin olive oil, a teaspoon salt, black pepper, lemon, and chopped parsley. It only takes 10 minutes to put together in a small bowl. The full recipe method is here.

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