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A bean salad without the added sugar still a sweet treat

When is a net weight not a net weight? Or, how to make 7.3 ounces seem like 14.5.

Here's my story.

Friends invited us over for a summer dinner where they would do most of the cooking, and we would bring a salad. I opted to bring a no-added-sugar version of a classic three-bean salad.

According to some sources, the classic three bean salad (green, yellow or wax, and kidney beans) first appeared in the 1960s. Since that salad's three beans came from canned beans, the original recipe could have come from a canned bean company.

I've always liked all three beans; especially wax or yellow beans. I've grown them (not always successfully) in my garden. Fresh wax beans, lightly steamed and simply seasoned with a touch of butter and some salt and pepper. Yummmm.

For the salad I was planning to make, I thought I'd try to use fresh green and wax beans, instead of canned. It's summer; I didn't want to spend the time cooking kidney beans; relying on canned, organic beans.

Locating fresh green beans was a cinch because there were piles of them at my local farmers market. In the past, finding fresh wax beans could be a difficult and, sometimes, impossible task. Fresh wax beans seem to have a short season and when found, tend to be pricey. After visiting three markets, I gave up and went for a can of wax beans.

The label of the canned wax beans I bought stated: “NET WT 14.5 OZ (411g).” Because my recipe uses nearly a pound of fresh green beans, I almost bought just one can of wax beans, because it appeared to contain nearly a pound of beans, or so I believed. To be safe (and perhaps to have another can to make the salad again), I bought two cans.

I assumed that the net weight referred to the net weight of the beans inside the can. Was I ever wrong.

When making my salad I drained the first can of wax beans and weighed the beans that remained on my kitchen's digital scale and found, to my surprise, they weighed just 7.3 ounces.

The beans from two cans of drained wax beans weighed-in at 14.7 ounces; nearly equal to my fresh green bean's weight. That label must mean the net weight is the total weight, including the liquid, of what's inside the can, excluding the can. Tricky.

Because I didn't have a set recipe for a three bean salad, I went hunting on the internet for one. I knew the dressing was a sweetened vinaigrette; I just didn't know how sweet until I compiled a few recipes.

For a single salad, calling for a half-pound each of green and wax beans and a can of kidney beans the dressing was commonly sweetened with up to ¾ cup granulated sugar. For my larger salad, that would have been up to 1½ cups sugar. That's nearly 1,200 calories and to my palate would have produced a very sweet salad.

I doubled everything in my salad except for the dressing and decided to sweeten the dressing with the equivalent of a half-cup of sugar; using the natural sugar substitute, organic stevia, instead. Zero calories and no added sugar. Now that's sweet.

How did my salad turn out? Not too sweet and delicious with the right balance of green, yellow and kidney beans. Give it a try.

Don Mauer welcomes questions, comments and recipe makeover requests. Write to him at don@theleanwizard.com.

New No-Sugar-Added Three Bean Salad

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