This fresh and colorful Cowboy Caviar recipe combines two types of beans, delicious summer vegetables, and a sweet and tangy lime vinaigrette dressing to make a bold and versatile dish that you’ll find yourself making all summer long. It’s a great chip dip, party appetizer, taco topper, salad add-on, or just a simple side dish. Plus, Cowboy Caviar holds up great in the fridge, so it has become my go-to healthy meal prep. I literally never get tired of it!
What is Cowboy Caviar?
Cowboy Caviar, sometimes called Texas Caviar or Mexican Caviar, is like a cross between a bean salad and a fresh salsa. It combines two types of beans, black beans and black-eyed peas, with a colorful medley of fresh vegetables and a tangy balsamic-lime vinaigrette. It can be served as a side dish, or a garnish for any number of foods like tacos, salads, grilled meats, and more.
Ingredients for Cowboy Caviar
Cowboy caviar combines a medley of super fresh, colorful, and vibrant ingredients. Here’s what you’ll need to make this super fresh bean salad:
- Beans: We use a combination of black beans and black-eyed peas for maximum color. You can substitute pinto beans for the black-eyed peas if needed.
- Peppers: A mix of bell pepper and jalapeño add a deliciously fresh crunch to the salad. You can use any color bell pepper, yellow or orange add the most color to the cowboy caviar.
- Onion: Red onion gives the salad a nice spicy bite, more color, and even more crunch! You can substitute with green onion if you need a milder flavor.
- Cilantro: A handful of fresh cilantro adds even more color to this bold mix and a breath of fresh green flavor. If you can’t eat cilantro, I suggest adding a little green onion.
- Dressing: We make our own lime vinaigrette for this Cowboy Caviar recipe using olive oil, balsamic vinegar, lime, cumin, chili powder, salt, and sugar. But, if you’re in a rush, this salad also tastes great using bottled Italian dressing!
Where Do You Find Black-Eyed Peas?
Because black-eyed peas are technically a “pea” (vegetable) they’re sometimes found with the canned vegetables rather than the beans. You can also often find them in the freezer aisle, although you’ll want to boil those black-eyed peas first, according to the cooking instructions on the package. And if you can’t find black-eyed peas, you can substitute pinto beans or navy beans.
Cowboy Caviar Variations
This Cowboy Caviar recipe is extremely versatile and there are tons of other ingredients you can add to make it your own. Here are some other ingredients you can add:
- Avocado for a creamy finish
- A dash or two of hot sauce to make it extra spicy
- Skip the jalapeño to make a mild cowboy caviar
- Use green onion in place of the red onion to make it more mild, or in place of the cilantro if cilantro isn’t your thing!
- Sweet corn adds more color and texture to the mix and can be a great low-cost substitution for yellow bell pepper
- Fresh garlic adds a savory-spicy kick!
- Add canned hominy (drained) for more color and texture
- Use garbanzo beans in place of any of the beans
How Long Does it Last?
Well, if you don’t eat it all in one sitting (it can happen!), this Cowboy Caviar recipe holds up extremely well in the refrigerator and will stay good in the refrigerator for about 4-5 days. While the vegetables will let off a little water, most of the ingredients are very sturdy. Just be sure to stir the salad before serving to redistribute the dressing. This salad will probably not freeze well, due to the fresh herbs and vegetables.
How to Serve Cowboy Caviar
There are SO many ways to eat Cowboy Caviar that you’ll probably find yourself adding it to everything you eat. But here are a few ideas anyway:
- Serve it as a side dish with dinner
- Use as a chunky dip for tortilla chips
- Use it as a topping for tacos
- Stuff it into a burrito or as part of a burrito bowl
- Sprinkle a spoonful or two over a green salad
- Add it on top of scrambled eggs
- Use it as a quesadilla filling
…and so much more. If you have a favorite way to eat your Cowboy Caviar, feel free to share it with the rest of us in the comments below!
Cowboy Caviar
Servings 10 (1/2 cup each)Ingredients
DRESSING*
- 2 Tbsp olive oil
- 1 fresh lime (2 Tbsp juice) ($0.33)
- 1/2 Tbsp balsamic vinegar ($0.10)
- 1/2 tsp chili powder** ($0.05)
- 1 tsp ground cumin ($0.10)
- 1/2 tsp salt ($0.02)
- 1/2 tsp sugar ($0.02)
Salad
- 1 15oz. can black beans ($0.89 )
- 1 15oz. can black eyed peas ($1.09)
- 1 bell pepper (any color) ($1.50)
- 2 Roma tomatoes ($0.86)
- 1 jalapeño ($0.12)
- 1/4 red onion ($0.20)
- 1/4 bunch fresh cilantro ($0.20)
Instructions
- In a small bowl, whisk together the olive oil, 2 Tbsp of juice from the lime, balsamic vinegar, chili powder, cumin, salt, and sugar.
- Rinse and drain both cans of beans in a colander. Once well drained, transfer them to a large bowl.
- Finely dice the bell pepper, tomatoes, jalapeño, and red onion. Try to dice the vegetables into pieces that are roughly the same size as the beans. For a less spicy salad, scrape the seeds out of the jalapeño before dicing. Roughly chop the cilantro.
- Add the chopped vegetables to the bowl with the beans.
- Pour the dressing over the salad, then stir until everything is well coated. Serve immediately, or refrigerate until ready to eat.
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Notes
Nutrition
Video
How to Make Cowboy Caviar – Step by Step Photos
Make the dressing first so the flavors have a few minutes to blend. Whisk together 2 Tbsp olive oil, 2 Tbsp lime juice, ½ Tbsp balsamic vinegar, 1 tsp cumin, ½ tsp chili powder, ½ tsp sugar, and ½ tsp salt.
Rinse and drain one 15oz. can of black beans and one 15oz. can of black-eyed peas in a colander.
Gather one bell pepper (any color), two Roma tomatoes, one jalapeño, 1/4 of a red onion, and 1/4 bunch of cilantro. While any color bell pepper can be used, I like the colorful pop of yellow or orange bell pepper.
Finely dice the bell pepper, tomatoes, jalapeño, and red onion. The idea is to get the pieces close in size to the beans so that you have a “caviar” type appearance in the end. Roughly chop the cilantro leaves. Place the chopped vegetables in the bowl with the rinsed beans.
Pour the prepared dressing over the salad.
Stir the salad until everything is coated in the dressing. Serve immediately or refrigerate until ready to eat. This is one of those salads that tastes even better after it has time to chill in the fridge, so it’s great to eat over the course of a few days!
This Cowboy Caviar recipe makes a great snack with tortilla chips, a topper for tacos, bowl meals, or salads, or spoon some onto baked or grilled fish for a nice light meal!
oh my goodness this was so good, it was my main meal for several days! absolutely delicious and perfect for summer.
This is our 2nd time making this in as many weeks. A double batch this time. From kids to adults everyone loves it! It’s perfect for these hot summer evenings! Cowboy Caviar is amazing!
Very good! I added two cloves of garlic to mine for an extra kick.
I don’t know about cowboys, but Texas Caviar requires a can of hominy in there!
I made this just now, I’m giving one more star because it’s supposed to be better as it sits in the fridge. I had a few servings with some salad greens and (very few)chips for lunch, and it was pretty filling, pretty good but not as good as I’d hoped. This was my first time eating black eyed peas too I think, and I’m realizing I might not be a big fan, at least of them raw. Maybe I need to add more things when I’m eating it as a meal to enjoy it more.
I’m giving it time to improve, but at this point I think I’d increase the dressing by half or up the salt some. I did appreciate that this recipe left out the avo, because I’m on a budget and lately lots of the avocados at the store aren’t ripe or are way overripe, but I do think the avocado included would make it a lot better.
This stuff is great on everything! Breakfast burrito, quesadilla, and on top of grilled chicken with chipotle lime crema. I can’t wait to make this again!
This is what I call “salad topper.” Any bean, any chopped fresh veg, plus a coating of vinaigrette dressing, goes in the fridge to bulk up and add protein to plain salad greens. I’m usually too lazy to make a fancy salad every day, so this makes it easy for a few days. Add crumbled cheese or chopped boiled egg for a full meal on a hot night! I can’t wait to try this variation this week, it’s supposed to hit a hundred every day!
This is really good and really addictive!
Tried this with corn instead of black-eye peas… and wow!!! The sweetness from the corn in my experience made everything brighter. has great color, great taste, and a kick that I can actually handle! As a college student, this is a great way to get some veggies in for a snack and still have leftovers!
this is delicious! I made it for dinner with grilled chicken and sweet potato fries. My college aged son, who is a pretty good eater but can sometimes have a thing about raw vegetable textures, took a small bite and then said “dang, mom, this is good!” and got a second helping. It’s going to be a regular for us this summer.
This is a good one! I added some taco meat and made it into six servings for more of a meal. With some sour cream on top, it was really delicious.
This is surprisingly delicious. The only change I made was to soak and cook dried black eyed peas as I couldn’t find canned in any stores. I thought it would taste perfectly good, but was surprised at how much I loved it. I ate it as is, as a dip for corn chips and even heated up mixed with rice for breakfast. I absolutely loved it.
You could freeze final leftovers and use as a base or addition to chili. Or tortilla soup? Or to create a southwestern minestrone?
I haven’t tried that, but it’s a good idea! Since everything would get soft when cooked in a chili or soup anyway, you don’t have to worry about the fact that it would soften from freezing/thawing.
This really does rock with everything! I chopped up some cinnamon roasted sweet potatoes that were leftover from Smoky Chicken & Cinnamon Sweet Potato Meal Prep, and tossed them in, and put the whole salad over some arugula. AMAZING. I also did not have black eyed peas, so I subbed in great northern beans; subbed sweet corn for bell pepper. And my leftover red onion was moldy so I just omitted it LOL. At the risk of being one of those “I changed the recipe completely and it was delicious!” people — this is a very versatile base with a delicious dressing.
Has anyone made this with candied jalepenos? The ones I get have a nice heat/sweet balance. I’m not sure if it would be good, or just too sweet overall.