Chargrill Charlie S Green Bean Avocado Salad Copycat

This salad is made with soft cooked green beans, tomato and avocado with a sprinkling of chopped capsicum/bell peppers and red onion, then tossed with a creamy avocado dressing. Love the avocado on avocado in this. 🙂

Green Bean Avocado Salad – copycat recipe

Chargrill Charlie’s is a charcoal chicken chain here in Sydney. I don’t really go for their chicken. But they are known for their salads! This Green Bean Avocado Salad is a copycat of one of their more popular ones which I’m sharing pursuant to a reader request. Green beans, tomato, little bits of capsicum/bell peppers and red onion, and the clincher: double avocado. Avocado in the salad AND the creamy avocado dressing. It costs a mighty $7 for a small tub. It didn’t cost much more than $7 to make a giant bowl of it at home!! (Mind you, green beans were on sale for $2.50/kg – that’s 2 pounds! If you’re long on green beans too, head over to my Green Bean Recipes.)

Avocado on avocado – in the dressing AND in the salad. Because nobody ever said “there’s too much avocado in this!”

What goes in Green Bean Avocado Salad

Here’s what goes in the salad:

The green beans seem raw (or borderline raw) at Chargrill Charlie’s. For this salad, I think it’s nicer cooked (steamed). And not just “tender-crisp” cooked, but fully cooked to soft. Just melds together better with all the other stuff in the salad.

Alternatives to green beans

Haven’t tried, but I imagine asparagus and broccolini would be terrific alternatives to the beans (similar shape and texture).

What goes in the Creamy Avocado Dressing

And here’s what goes in the Creamy Avocado Dressing:

I actually wrote up the dressing as a separate recipe (though I’ve also included it in the recipe card below) because it’s terrific to use for any salad when you want a creamy dressing fix without the guilt! Here’s the Creamy Avocado Dressing recipe – which also includes a bunch of flavour variations (ranch, Caesar, Italian, Mexican, to name a few).

How to make it

No rocket science here. Steam the greens, chop the veg, blitz the dressing them bring it all together!

Heads up: it looks pretty and colourful right up to the point you start tossing. Then it doesn’t look so attractive – I feel like that’s the case with most creamy dressings. So it might look like a bit of a mess, but it’s mighty tasty!

Serve it as a side or a light meal!

I know the obvious way to serve this is as a side dish but that hasn’t happened once around here! I’ve been having it for lunch, and even as a light supper because it’s got more oomph than most side salads. I’ve added protein in various forms –

cooked chicken (Foolproof Juicy Poached Chicken is my “make every week” standby) can of tuna (other forms of canned fish would be ideal too) chopped hardboiled egg

Some crusty bread or soft rolls on the side wouldn’t go astray. Or for a faster option, savoury muffins – either these Cheese Muffins or Mediteranean Muffins. As a side dish, it would go with any protein but I think it would be particularly great with chicken or fish. Here are a few suggestions:

Mains to serve with this green bean salad

Lastly, this recipe will make more creamy Avocado Dressing than you need. It’s a bit hard to make less, from a blitzing perspective. It will keep for 3 days and doesn’t go brown. Use for your next salad, or for dunking (bread, crackers, chips, veg). – Nagi x