Determined to hit my step goal, I recently switched up my commute, walking 20 minutes to an express train instead of taking the line closest to home. It’s been a nice change in routine, for the most part. Here’s the rub: The M.T.A. has managed to create dozens of little hells on earth, and they are the regularly un-air-conditioned cars of the A train. For the low price of $2.90, you too can show up to your office job unprofessionally soaked.
Come the commute back home, the still, suffocating air has eviscerated my desire to turn on the oven or a stove burner. With a heat wave rapidly approaching the Northeast and parts of the Midwest, it’s only going to get worse.
So begins no-cook season. To build your no-cook arsenal is to turn your attention to one Hetty Lui McKinnon. Her latest recipe transforms the very-much-cooked vegetarian chili into a need-no-heat salad. Behold: the no-cook chili bean salad.
It’s genius. It’s versatile. It still plays well with a tricked-out toppings bar. Fresh tomatoes, red onion, bell pepper and canned pinto and black beans mingle in a highly seasoned and tangy marinade, all awaiting your desired combination of corn chips, tortillas, sour cream, avocado and cheese.
No-Cook Chili Bean Salad
If you have only white beans, you could certainly swap those in. Or turn to another Hetty no-cook joint, her white bean, feta and quick-pickled celery salad. It’s the kind of salad made for the day you return from vacation to a kitchen as bare as feet on the beach.
It relies on pantry staples — white wine vinegar, sugar, (optional) cumin seeds, olive oil — and hearty vegetables that can survive you skipping town. You may very well have the minimal garnishes — feta, mint (or other tender herbs) — on hand, too.
But let’s say you have chickpeas, not white beans; sherry vinegar, not white wine vinegar; basil, not mint; Parm, not feta; some scallions and cherry tomatoes lying around. Well then: You’re making Cara Mangini’s marinated celery salad with chickpeas and Parmesan, adapted by Julia Moskin! Same, but different. (Your friendly reminder to seek out hard cheeses labeled “vegetarian,” meaning they use nonanimal rennet for the cheese-making process, if you need to.)
The recipe gives you the option to toast up some crispy croutons using day-old bread. Which brings me to a bit of no-cook existentialism: Is toasting cooking? Every summer, I ask my boss, Krysten Chambrot, this question. And every time, she says, “Tanya, you asked me this last summer.” So she push-pinned to my desk a piece of notebook paper, dated 2024, that reads: “Toasting is not cooking.”
If you agree, then you might prefer to make Kay Chun’s tomato-marinated greens and beans toast, which I featured earlier this month and includes canned lentils for ease. Or try Kay’s chickpea salad sandwich, great served open-faced on toast, my preference.
But canned legumes are not your only no-cook protein play. Hetty again displays the cooking shortcuts at your disposal with her recipe for kale, couscous and tofu salad with carrot-ginger dressing. She calls for packed, already-baked tofu, which has a firmer texture that holds up nicely in salads, eliminates any oven or stovetop time, and is available at many grocery stores. And instead of monitoring a pot of couscous on the stove, she rehydrates it by pouring over one cup of boiling water and letting it hang out while she prepares the rest of the salad.
Is boiling water in a kettle cooking? Come Monday, when the high in New York City is 99 degrees, semantics won’t matter to me much.
White Bean, Feta and Quick-Pickled Celery Salad
Chickpea Salad Sandwich
Kale, Couscous and Tofu Salad With Carrot-Ginger Dressing
One More Thing!
Tomorrow is the summer solstice, the longest day of the year up here in the Northern Hemisphere. Allow me to present you with a challenge to celebrate: Between now and Sept. 22, won’t you try to make every vegetarian recipe from our Summer 100? Margaux Laskey compiled 100 easy recipes for the season, and about half them are meatless dinners, lunches, snacks and salads, not to mention the desserts.
Thanks for reading, and see you next week!
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Tanya Sichynsky is an editor for the Food and Cooking sections of The Times and the author of The Veggie, a weekly vegetarian newsletter.
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