Featuring peak season produce and a glorious late summer palette of emerald green beans, sunshine yellow corn kernels, and tawny new potatoes, Potato, Corn, and Green Bean Salad with Feta Cream and Herbs makes for a satisfyingly succulent, tangy, and herbaceous dish for your lunch, dinner, bbq, or picnic repast.
I really do love a great potato salad. Some exceptional potato salads are creamy and lucious, others are more sparsely dressed with olive oil vinaigrettes and just as delicious. It’s a bit of a conundrum as to which variety to eat or make, until I realized that both of these stylistic aspects could be combined together into one mouth watering dish!
While ideally Potato, Corn and Green Bean Salad with Feta Cream and Herbs is made when produce is fresh and in season, I actually first developed this recipe in the winter with frozen corn kernels that I had previously removed from the cob using my favourite corn zipper, stashed in my freezer during the prior summer, and with standard green beans. It came out beautifully, so use whatever you have on hand or have access to.
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Starting with herbs
At this potato salad features mounds of freshly chopped herbs, I think that's a great place to start, with a little trick I use in many recipes. When using tender herbs, I most often use the stems as well, and not just the leaves, and that is what I do here. If you don’t usually include parsley stems or dill stems when using fresh herbs, just give them a try! A quick bite reveals a crunchy and flavourful facet of tender culinary herbs that are too often tossed away into the compost, and including the leaves, fronds, and the stems adds additional flavour and texture to this any other dish featuring fresh herbs.
Instructions
Vegetable laden, this easy to make salad features cooked green beans, corn kernels, and new potatoes tossed in a herb laden dressing replete with dill, parsley, olive oil and tangy lemon juice.
This delicious mixture, which of course you could eat in and of itself, rests on a bed of feta cream (also an edible highlight in its own right), made in a food processor with labneh or Greek yogurt, feta cheese, and enlivened with just the right amount of fresh garlic and lemon zest.
To finish the dish, a sprinkle of nigella seeds adds an essential herbal and oniony note and a touch of mild dried Turkish red pepper adds a subtle earthy piquant flavour. As you serve the finished dish, each spoonful of the salad provides both the tangy and herb flecked vegetable and potato salad alongside dollops of the savoury feta cream, making for extremely delicious eating for potato salad enthusiasts.
Notes on ingredients
If you have access to them, “french” green beans are a slimmer, smaller green bean that I generally find more tender and less fibrous than some larger green beans. I’m lucky enough to grow them myself in my backyard vegetable garden, but when the season is over I find that they are increasingly available these days in mainstream supermarkets, at least in my area. When using standard green beans, which I do when the smaller variety isn’t available, I just make sure I cook them a touch longer for increased tenderness.
I love the earthy flavour and texture of potato skins, so I use baby or new potatoes with the skins on, but I know some eaters really dislike the slight bitter note that potato skins can introduce. If you prefer to omit the potato skins, simply use larger peeled potatoes cut into small chunks.
Notes on cooking
Following the sage advice of Cooks Illustrated, I always cook my green beans, and my potatoes for that matter, in very generously salted water. The extra amount of salt results in cooked green beans that actually stay green and that have an improved, more crisp texture even when cooked.
In this recipe, I call for boiling the potatoes in this extra salted water first, then adding in the green beans in for the last few minutes, reducing the overall cooking time for the recipe, reducing the number of dirty dishes, and all with the added bonus of perfectly salted beans and potatoes in your finished dish.
The Food Finds
Nigella
A small, black seed similar in size to a sesame seed, nigella is a Food Find essential in my spice cupboard. Herbaceous and flavourful, with notes of fresh green herbs and toasted onions, nigella adds savoury and unmissable flair to so many dishes. Find out more about nigella, where to find it, and other ways to use it.
Turkish dried peppers
Red pepper flakes in numerous regional varieties are used throughout Turkish cuisine. Perhaps less famous than its cousins Urfa Biber or Aleppo pepper, my favourite dried Turkish pepper is mild Antep red pepper. These semi dried pepper flakes feature a flavour that is all at once salty, sour, sweet, mildly smoky, and zingy; flavourful rather than spicy. If you don’t have access to Turkish dried pepper, mild Korean Gochugaru is a great substitute, and sweet paprika could also be used in a pinch. Find out more about Turkish dried peppers and where to find them.
Corn zipper
I’m a sucker for a specialty kitchen tool and I probably mention this particular one too much. Similar to a vegetable peeler, but with the right spacing for corn kernels and with a row of sharp micro teeth instead of a single blade, the corn zipper efficiently strips the corn off the cob. Find out more about the useful corn zipper.
Substitutions
If you are vegan, you can just make the herbed potato and vegetable mixture; finished off with the nigella seeds and mild chilli flakes it is truly delicious in its own right. There are of course various yogurt and feta substitutes available that are also completely plant based, so you could also substitute the dairy for your vegan dairy products of choice. Make sure to note that some vegan yogurts are very tangy, and some vegan fetas extra salty, so you may need to reduce the amount of lemon and omit or adjust any extra salt at the end.
Ways to enjoy Potato, Corn, and Green Bean Salad with Feta Cream and Herbs
I usually eat this salad for lunch, sometimes on the grass in my backyard for an at home picnic, at dinner with other simple accompaniments on the side, or packed up into a container for a picnic somewhere further afield. You could pack the feta cream and the tossed vegetable salad components separately, and assemble them onsite onto individual plates, or you could throw caution to the wind and layer it all into one larger container and just serve it once you get to your destination.
Are you a corn enthusiast?
Fresh, frozen, or saved for later, check out these recipes and ideas from one corn lover to another:
Potato, Corn, and Green Bean Salad with Feta Cream and Herbs
Ingredients
- 1 tablespoon sea salt to add to the water using for boiling
- 500 gms approx. whole baby or new potatoes yellow or gold varieties preferred, or if desired use larger potatoes, peeled and cut into smaller chunks
- 200 gms approx. green beans use “french” green beans if available
- 2 large cobs of fresh corn, shucked or 2 cups of corn kernels
- 1 cup labneh or thick Greek yogurt
- 1 cup feta
- ½ small clove garlic, minced
- Zest of one lemon
- A large handful of parsley leaves and stems included
- A large handful of dill fronds and tender stems included
- 3-4 tablespoon olive oil
- Juice of one lemon
- ¼ teaspoon nigella seeds
- ¼ teaspoon mild Turkish dried red pepper or other mild dried pepper flakes such as Korean Gochugaru or sweet paprika
- Salt to taste
Instructions
- Fill a medium pot with water and stir in 1 tablespoon of sea salt. Set the pot on high heat and add the potatoes, leaving the unpeeled potatoes whole if small, or peel and cut larger potatoes in chunks if preferred. Boil the potatoes until almost fork tender.
- Add the green beans and boil for a final 2 minutes - if your green beans are quite thick or fibrous add them for a final 3 minutes. Drain the potatoes and green beans and set aside to cool - the residual heat will soften up the green beans a bit further so don’t worry if they are a touch too crisp at this point.
- Using the same pot filled again with fresh water (without salt), add the corn cobs and bring to a boil over high heat, cooking for 7-10 minutes depending on how toothsome you prefer your corn. Drain the corn and set the cobs aside to cool. It’s ok if the vegetables are still a bit warm once you begin to assemble the salad.
- While the vegetables are cooling, make the feta cream. Add the feta, labneh or Greek yogurt, and minced garlic to the bowl of a food processor, mini chopper, or bullet style blender and blend until quite smooth. Alternatively, if you don’t have any of these appliances, you can place the ingredients in a bowl and hand mash/mix. Add the lemon zest to the smooth mixture and gently incorporate with a flexible kitchen spatula as you scrape the mixture out onto your serving platter, making gentle mounds around the bottom and sides of the bowl.
- Finely chop the leaves, fronds and stems of the herbs. Add into a large mixing bowl along with the olive oil and the lemon juice. Mix well, taste and add salt as needed, remembering that the feta cream will be somewhat salty.
- Use a corn zipper or knife to cut the corn kernels off of the cob, and place the cooled corn kernels, potatoes, and beans into the same bowl with the herb mixture and mix well.
- Mound the vegetable salad onto the feta cream, sprinkle with the nigella seeds and dried chilli flakes. Enjoy!
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