Dense Bean Salad Has Taken TikTok by Storm, So I Had to Try the Healthy Trend at Home

Like always, food has been at the forefront of what’s trendy this summer. Tinned fish’s rise to fame brought us Sardine Girl Summer. Warm-weather produce like lemon and guava have translated into home décor and clothing. And don’t get me started on the picnic core aesthetic, which takes gingham off the lawn and onto the rack with summery prints that every former #tomatogirl would be thrilled to wear.

Another food trend I couldn’t help but hear about this season is dense bean salad, which online foodies have been clamoring over for its nutritional benefits, easy preparation and magical make-ahead properties. Here, you’ll find everything you need to know about the dense bean salad TikTok trend, as well as a sample recipe I created that just might inspire you to make your own.

Dense bean salad is…well, it’s basically just bean salad. But the emphasis of most recipes seems to be fiber, as beans are usually the main ingredient, along with fresh produce and some sort of light dressing (usually a vinaigrette). Cheese and meat are common additions as well, but beans are the star. All types are fair game, from chickpeas to black beans to kidney beans. The key to dense bean salad is to let the mixture sit in the fridge before serving, which allows all the components to soak up the dressing, causing the dish to get more and more flavorful as it chills.

Bean salad is certainly nothing new. It’s been a beloved go-to dish for decades, since it’s filling, easy to prepare (especially with canned beans that you don’t need to cook from scratch), endlessly riffable and make-ahead-friendly. However, I feel it’s been creeping its way up the internet’s ladder of popularity for the last three years. (Remember when Cowboy Caviar’s reign in 2022?)

This time around, Violet Witchel (@violetwitchel), a content creator based in San Francisco, is the root of the dense bean salad trend, so much so that she’s even dubbed herself the Dense Bean Salad Girl. She’s shared many protein-packed dense bean salads on her TikTok to date, each of them racking up six-digit likes and millions on millions of views. (Her most popular features sun-dried tomatoes, but other top recipes include marinated feta, chimichurri steak and spicy chipotle chicken.) Even though most of her DBS videos were posted in 2024, the trend really took off this summer, with countless nutritionists and online foodies following suit. I can see why, since bean salad can be prepared in advance and without a moment of cooking, making it a great cold meal for the hottest summer nights.