Meet Dense Bean Salad: The Easy Dish That’s Taking the Internet by Storm

It’s probably no surprise that my TikTok For You page is filled with recipe after recipe for seasonal dishes, easy dinners, and crave-able late-night snacks. Besides my mom’s arsenal of family recipes and our site, TikTok is probably my most used source for cooking inspiration.

It’s where I’ve found my favorite appetizers, few ingredient dinners, and, of course, simple tricks for all of my food woes. Basically, I open the app and my mouth is watering within minutes.
Recently, I stumbled upon a recipe that might not be a new concept, but is certainly new to me: Dense bean salad.

What Is Dense Bean Salad?

TikTok creator Violet Witchel has been posting her “dense bean salad” recipes for months, saying that meal prepping the marinated bean salad every week helps “make eating healthy easy” with the high protein, high fiber, veggie-packed options. With dozens of recipes racking up millions of views each, Witchel has deemed herself the “Dense Bean Salad girl.”

If you—like me—heard the term and thought, “What the heck is a dense bean salad?” you’re about to have your mealtime changed forever.

Dense bean salad is a multi-bean salad mixed with a handful of other ingredients—usually veggies, meats, and cheese—and some kind of dressing. It’s a marinated bean salad that Witchel preps a big bowl of, then allows to macerate in the fridge, sucking in all the juices as it gets better throughout the week.

While Witchel has shared a few recipes on TikTok—including Buffalo chicken, grinder, and pesto—dense bean salad can basically be anything you want it to be.

How To Make Dense Bean Salad

To make a dense bean salad, you’ll typically start with canned beans, like chickpeas and cannellini; then add fresh vegetables or fruit, like bell peppers, tomatoes, onion, radishes, corn, apples, and peaches; meat, like chicken, steak, or deli meat; and any other toppings you want to mix in, like cheese, roasted red peppers, and banana peppers. Then, you’ll add your favorite dressing—it could be as simple as an Italian dressing or balsamic vinaigrette—and toss everything together.

While dense bean salad can be enjoyed straight away, much like chili or pasta salad, it gets better the longer it sits, and the flavors have a chance to meld.

You can eat your dense bean salad right out of the bowl, in a salad, or as a sandwich or wrap.

Dense Bean Salad Recipes To Try

We have quite a few dense bean salad recipes on our site, including:

• Greek Garbanzo Bean Salad
• Cannellini Bean Salad with Pesto
• Best Bean Salad
• Mediterranean Bean Salad
• Cowboy Caviar

You can also follow one of Witchel’s recipes from TikTok—I tried her Buffalo Chicken Dense Bean Salad, and our digital editor, Corey Williams, who has proclaimed she’s “obsessed” with dense bean salad, tried the Grinder Bean Salad.

Why You Should Try Dense Bean Salad

Dense bean salad has garnered a lot of attention on TikTok, with the search term resulting in hundreds of videos with recipes and people trying the trending salad. Beyond the fact that it’s easy to make, users love dense bean salad because it’s delicious, and you can prep a big bowl of it that lasts for multiple meals.

Also, the salad is packed with protein, fiber, and vitamins for a nutrient-dense, well-rounded option.

A less-touted but equally important benefit? “Girl, your dense bean salad recipes have no lie changed my life, my poops are impeccable,” one TikTok user commented on Witchel’s video.

Look at that; tasty and might even help you poop—who can say no to dense bean salad now?