Butterbean (Lima Bean) Pasta Salad

This is a relatively simple and quick cold pasta salad; I often make some variant of this recipe for lunch at work when I want to have a break from sandwiches. For convenience, you can make it the night before, pop it into the fridge, and then take it into work the next day. It would also work well for a picnic salad (though as I write this, it's completely the wrong season). I designed this recipe in order to have a well-balanced lunch - carbs (pasta) plus protein (beans) plus vegetables. This time I happened to use butterbeans (i.e. lima beans) and sweetcorn, but I have used other beans (kidney, cannellini, whatever else is in the cupboard) and other veg (e.g. sweet pepper or cherry tomatoes) so feel free to play around with the recipe as you see fit. If you don't like mayonnaise, I have also made this before with a simple home made salad dressing of oil and vinegar, so you could do that instead.

Serves 2 for lunch at work (though you  may want to adjust the pasta to suit your preferred serving size)

Ingredients:

110g pasta
1 tin butter beans (or other of choice)
3 - 4 tbsp frozen sweetcorn / one small tin (optional; can substitute with e.g. sweet pepper or cherry tomatoes)
1-2 tbsp mayonnaise (or substitute with other dressing e.g 1 tbsp olive oil and 1/2 tbsp vinger of choice)
1 tsp smoked paprika
1/2 tsp mustard (any will do; I used English)
1/2 tsp dried thyme
salt and pepper to taste


1. Boil a pan of water and cook the pasta until almost done.

2. Drain the butter beans and add to the pan along with the sweetcorn (or sweet pepper - if using tomatoes, don't add to the pan).

3. Once the pasta is cooked and the beans and veg are cooked through, drain all the ingredients and immediately rinse in cold water until cold.

4. Transfer to a mixing bowl (or to save on washing up you can return it to the pan, but make sure you rinse the pan in cold water so that it doesn't heat the pasta back up).

Add the mayonaise/dressing, cherry tomatoes (if using), smoked paprika, mustard and thyme and mix through; you may want to adjust the flavourings to suit your tastes. Finally, season with salt and pepper as desired.