My Mom’s 1-Ingredient Upgrade for Cowboy Caviar
What did my mom add to make her cowboy caviar so good? It's something you can find in your pantry.
My parents and I live in the same town, and every weekend we get together for a family dinner. It’s hardly a formal affair–usually I scrounge food in my fridge, then I get there and my mom and I scrounge food in her fridge. From that, we cobble a dinner-like situation together.
I’m always late because I'm busy moving the lawn or doing strenuous home renovations. And usually, I’m ravenous. Recently, I got there, and mom had chips and some kind of bean salad out, and I immediately began shoving them in my mouth.
“Wait, what is this?” I asked her, pointing at the bowl. “It’s so good!”
“It’s the cowboy caviar recipe from your site,” she said. “But I added something extra.”
That extra thing made all of the difference. I practically finished off the bowl.
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What did my mom add to make her latest batch of cowboy caviar so good? Chipotle powder.
Cowboy caviar (AKA Texas caviar) is a bean salad/salsa hybrid that’s so good with giant tortilla chips, the kind that can really scoop up chunky foods. Its base is always black-eyed peas, but besides that, it usually has some combination of chopped scallions or onion, bell pepper, tomatoes, garlic, jalapeño, lime juice, and olive oil; ingredients can vary.
The chipotle powder’s smoky depth helped offset the dressing’s acidic brightness, and the added heat kept me coming back for more. The cowboy caviar had an entirely new flavor dimension, making it incredibly moreish. I asked mom why she’d added it, and she said she didn’t have any jalapeños handy. I’ll never have cowboy caviar another way now.
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You could add chipotle powder to any cowboy caviar recipe, but I’m partial to ours, which comes from Lisa Fain of the blog Homesick Texan. It calls for four cups of black-eyed peas, and mom said she added a sprinkle of chipotle powder.
When I made it myself, I found I needed an entire teaspoon of it for the flavor to come though, though. Apparently my mom and I have different definitions of “sprinkle”. Just remember–it’s a lot easier to add more spice than to take spice away. Start small, then dip a chip in there and taste, adding more chipotle powder as needed.
Some chipotle powders may be spicier or smokier than others, so take that into account, too. If you like spicy food, you certainly could use both fresh jalapeños and chipotle powder. If you don’t have chipotle powder, smoked Spanish paprika is an excellent stand-in. I tried this in a subsequent batch, which we devoured in a similarly short timespan.
I find that cowboy caviar’s flavor improves as it sits for at least a few hours, especially when you’re deploying this chipotle powder trick, so it’s perfect make-ahead food for a party. It keeps in the fridge for weeks–unless you invite me over for dinner, wherein it’ll vanish in a flash.
