Mexican Grilled Corn and Squash Salad
Sweet summer corn is in season, and it’s absolutely perfect in this Mexican Grilled Corn and Squash Salad, also known as Calabacitas. This flavorful vegetarian dish works beautifully as a side, a salsa, or a topping, all brought together with a delicious dressing.
Mexican Squash
Calabacitas roughly translates to ‘squash’ or pumpkins. Mexican cooking has used squash for thousands of years. Chayote, a pear-shaped squash, is the most common, though it’s not always easy to find. Zucchini makes the closest substitute, but any summer squash works well—they all taste delicious with corn.
Mexican Style Sauce
The multi-use dressing is made with hot sauce, citrus, garlic, honey and cilantro that is so good, you’ll be licking it off the the spoon, and has just the right amount of spice.
Serving size
This recipe makes a lot of corn, 1. 75 quarts/7 U.S cups. It would serve 6 people as a side dish (4 tablespoons each) or 8 people if serving as a dip/salsa.
Mexican corn dressing
Not only is the dish multi-purpose, but so is the dressing. In addition to using the dressing in this salad, I also use it as I would a regular salad dressing, a marinade for beef, chicken or shrimp and a finishing sauce for grilled sliced meat.
In fact, the sauce is so good it has it’s own page with the recipe. I call it Sonoran Jalapeño Lime Sauce.
The hot sauce I like to use for the dressing recipe is Arizona Gunslinger. A red jalapeño sauce that has just 3 ingredients: red jalapeño peppers, vinegar and salt. This is the same sauce I use on my Spicy Blue Cheese Potato Chips, which are potato chips topped with blue cheese and jalapeño hot sauce.
You can pretty much add to this salad what you want. Crumbled Mexican cotija cheese would be delicious or sliced cherry tomatoes. You can also top the corn with melted cheese and make it ‘con queso’.
If you’ve made my Mexican Grilled Corn and Squash Salad, please leave a star rating in the recipe card. You can also leave a comment or ask a question below.
Mexican Grilled Corn and Squash Salad
Video
Ingredients
For the dressing:
- ½ cup (118 ml) olive or avocado oil
- 2 tablespoons red wine vinegar
- 1 garlic clove
- 2 teaspoons lime zest, 2 small limes
- 1 teaspoon lime juice
- ½ teaspoon cumin
- ¾ teaspoon salt
- Large handful of cilantro leaves
- 1 ½ tablespoons green spicy jalapeño sauce
- 2 tablespoons honey
For the vegetables:
- 4 corn on the cob
- 2 zucchini, sliced lengthwise
- Vegetable oil
- ½ cup (64 grams) red onion, chopped
- ¼ cup (60 grams) canned green chiles , mild or spicy
- 2 ½ tablespoons fresh cilantro/coriander, chopped
Instructions
- To a blender add the ingredients for the dressing, blend until smooth, set aside. Yields ½ cup dressing.
- Heat an outdoor grill or grill pan. Brush the corn cobs with the oil. When the grill is hot, add the corn and cook on each side, turning as needed until a nice char develops. Remove and set aside to cool.
- Brush the zucchini slices with oil and grill until lightly charred on each side. Set aside to cool.
- Once the corn is cooled, lay on its side and cut off all the kernels and add to a mixing bowl. Chop the zucchini and add to the corn along with the onion, green chiles and cilantro. Mix well.
- Drizzle in the dressing and stir well to coat. You can make this salad 2 days ahead which gives the flavors to intensify.