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This marinated salad is crisp, colorful, and full of sweet-tangy flavor, with a make-ahead dressing that gets even better overnight. Canned green beans, peas, corn, celery, and pepper soak up the dressing while staying tender and bright. It’s an easy cold side dish for backyard suppers, family dinners, or busy weekends.
Why You’ll Love It
- Make-ahead friendly — the salad needs 8 hours or overnight in the refrigerator.
- Sweet-tangy dressing — sugar, white wine vinegar, and olive oil balance the vegetables.
- Colorful and crisp — green beans, peas, corn, pimentos, celery, and green pepper make every bowl bright.
- Feeds a crowd — the recipe makes about 12 servings.
Ingredient Notes
This recipe uses canned green beans, canned peas, and canned sweet corn, and there is no need to turn it into a fresh-vegetable project. The canned vegetables are part of the charm. They’re tender, familiar, and they take on the dressing beautifully after their long chill.
Drain everything very well. Dump each can into a colander and let it sit while chopping the celery, pepper, and onion. Then give the colander a little shake over the sink.
Use the pimentos with their oil, just as written. That little bit of oil and flavor belongs in the salad. For the bell pepper, plain old green bell pepper gives the salad its slightly sharp crunch. Red bell pepper is sweeter and prettier, yes, but this particular salad doesn’t need prettier. It has enough going for it.
White onion has the right clean bite here. Dice it fairly small for even bites.
White wine vinegar is important. It has a milder, fruitier edge than plain distilled vinegar. Any decent grocery-store brand works well here.
Ingredients
- 2 (15-ounce) cans green beans, drained well
- 2 (15-ounce) cans green peas, drained well
- 2 (15-ounce) cans sweet corn, drained well
- 1 (2-ounce) jar pimentos with oil, don’t drain this one
- 2 stalks celery, finely diced
- 1 green bell pepper, diced
- ½ white onion, diced fairly small—I eyeball the size a little
- ¾ cup granulated sugar
- ¾ cup white wine vinegar
- ½ cup olive oil
- 1½ teaspoons salt
- ½ teaspoon ground black pepper
- ½ teaspoon onion powder
Instructions
In a small bowl, whisk together the granulated sugar, white wine vinegar, olive oil, salt, black pepper, and onion powder until everything is well combined. The sugar will not vanish instantly, so give it a good whisking and it will dissolve further as the salad chills.
Add the drained green beans, peas, and corn to a large bowl, along with the pimentos and their oil, diced celery, diced green bell pepper, and diced white onion. Use a bowl bigger than expected for easy tossing.
Pour the dressing over the vegetables. It may look like a lot at first, but that is exactly what the salad needs. This salad is meant to marinate, not merely be politely coated with dressing like some limp little side dish at a hotel buffet.
Toss everything together until the vegetables are thoroughly coated. Use a large spoon and a rubber spatula for easy tossing. Be gentle enough that the peas do not mash into paste.
Cover the bowl and refrigerate for 8 hours or overnight. If remembered after a few hours, give the salad a stir so the dressing keeps working its way around. If not, it will still be fine. Serve it cold, straight from the refrigerator.
Variations
Add a little more green bell pepper for extra crunch, or use a whole white onion for a larger batch. That is a lot of onion, though.
A little chopped cucumber is fresh and nice, but it gets watery if it sits overnight, so it does not work well here. This salad already has a perfectly good system. No need to bring cucumbers into it and start trouble.
Shredded carrots make the salad look brighter, but the flavor is oddly sweet. The recipe already has three-quarters cup of sugar in the dressing; it does not need help becoming dessert-adjacent. Bless its heart.
A pinch of celery seed works well in many marinated salads, but this version does not call for it. Keep it simple. The onion powder gives the dressing a faintly old-school flavor.
Storage & Reheating
Store Marinated Salad tightly covered in the refrigerator. It keeps well for about 3 to 4 days, and the second day is often the very best. By the third day, the vegetables are softer but still tasty, especially tucked beside a sandwich for lunch.
There is no reheating involved—please don’t heat it.
Before serving leftovers, give the salad a good stir. Some of the dressing settles at the bottom, and every scoop should get a little of that tangy goodness. If it seems a touch drier after a few days, that’s normal; the vegetables keep absorbing the dressing. It’s still good, just more marinated than salad by then.
Freezing is not recommended. Canned vegetables have been through enough already.
Final Notes
There’s something comforting about a recipe that doesn’t ask for anything clever. Open cans. Chop a few things. Whisk up a dressing that smells a little too vinegary at first, then put the whole bowl in the refrigerator and trust time to do its job.
And it is just salad. Canned vegetables, sugar, vinegar, a little patience.
But then it comes out cold the next day, spooned into a bowl, and somehow the kitchen feels like summer again—even if it’s raining.
Marinated Salad
Ingredients Â
- 2 (15-ounce) cans green beans drained well
- 2 (15-ounce) cans green peas drained well
- 2 (15-ounce) cans sweet corn drained well
- 1 (2-ounce) jar pimentos with oil do not drain
- 2 stalks celery finely diced
- 1 green bell pepper diced
- 1/2 white onion diced fairly small
- 3/4 cup granulated sugar
- 3/4 cup white wine vinegar
- 1/2 cup olive oil
- 1 1/2 teaspoons salt
- 1/2 teaspoon ground black pepper
- 1/2 teaspoon onion powder
InstructionsÂ
- In a small bowl, whisk together the granulated sugar, white wine vinegar, olive oil, salt, black pepper, and onion powder until well combined; the sugar will continue dissolving as the salad chills.
- Add the drained green beans, peas, and corn to a large bowl, along with the pimentos and their oil, diced celery, diced green bell pepper, and diced white onion.
- Pour the dressing over the vegetables; it may look like a lot at first, but the salad is meant to marinate.
- Toss everything together until the vegetables are thoroughly coated, using a large spoon and rubber spatula and being gentle enough that the peas do not mash.
- Cover the bowl and refrigerate for 8 hours or overnight, stirring after a few hours if remembered, then serve cold straight from the refrigerator.