Ultimate Cowboy Caviar | Food Wishes

Hello, this is Chef John from FoodWishes.com with the Ultimate Cowboy Caviar. That's right, caviar doesn't always come from fish. Sometimes it comes from Texas. But fair warning, this gorgeous crab pleaser is very addictive and once you start eating it's hard to stop. In fact, I've seen people at a party look at a bowl of this and say, I wish I knew how to quit but you know what, they can't. It's too good. So with that, let's go ahead and get started with our dressing, which for me includes some avocado oil, to which I'm going to add some rice vinegar, plus the juice of one large lime. And I think avocado oil is a great choice here, but any neutral vegetable oil will work. And yes, it is true that most cowboy caviar recipes just tell you to toss in some store-bought Italian dressing, but we're doing the Ultimate Cowboy Caviar. So we're going to take a couple extra minutes and make this from scratch. So we can add things like freshly minced garlic, plus a little bit of garlic powder. Oh yeah, garlic in two forms, one for fresh intensity and one for that subtle savoriness. And then we'll season this up with some salt, as well as a little touch of sugar, followed by some ground cumin, some smoked paprika, and then last but not least, a little bit of ground chipotle for that irresistible smoky heat. And that's going to be pretty much it for this very simple dressing. And sure, if you just like the people coming over to eat this, some bottled Italian salad dressing from the store is probably fine. But if you love them, a custom-designed dressing like this is going to be so, so much better. And once we have that mixed up, we can start adding our caviar ingredients, beginning with the peppers. And besides the dressing, another reason we're calling this the Ultimate Cowboy Caviar is because we're using peppers in three different forms. Okay, I like to combine fresh peppers, like this Anaheim and Beautiful Bells, as well as some roasted peppers, plus some kind of pickled peppers, which I have here in the form of jalapeno. And before we toss those in the bowl, let me give you a great time-saving tip for cutting your peppers. If you cut off the ends like this and set those aside, and then you simply stand the pepper up on its end and cut straight down, just slicing off the good parts, everything is going to be simpler. And what we're doing here is creating these nice flat square pieces of pepper, which are then very simple and easy to cut into strips, and then turn and cut into a nice neat dice. Okay, what takes people without great knife skills the most time is cutting all those curvaceous parts. So what I do is not cut those. You know what I do with those? I eat them. Those make a delicious, refreshing, and pretty good-for-you snack as you work. Or if you want to take the extra time and slice those parts up too, feel free. I mean, you are after all the Jake Gyllenhaal of this cowboy caviar, y'all. So do it how you want, but that's my system. But anyway, like I said, I'm going to toss in some diced fresh bell pepper and a little bit of anaheim, plus those sharp acidic, slightly spicy jalapeno rings, along with those beautiful, soft, bittersweet roasted red peppers. And then we'll also add some diced red onions that we should rinse under cold water to remove a lot of the sharpness. And then as far as I'm concerned, this must include some black beans, plus some black-eyed peas, and both those have been drained and rinsed. And by the way, if you've never had black-eyed peas, this is the recipe to try them in. And then we'll finish up with some frozen sweet corn, or fresh if you have it. Plus, last but not least, some diced tomatoes. And that's it. We'll take a tablespoon and give this a very thorough mix. And you don't have to, but I did take the extra five minutes and slice up some fresh tomato. All right, most recipes just call for cans, but again, if we're doing the ultimate cowboy caviar, I think we really want to go fresh here, since it will definitely make this taste better. But anyway, what we'll do is give that a very thorough mix before we wrap it and pop it in the fridge for a few hours. All right, you can serve this right away if you want, but it's always better if you give those flavors time to mingle and eventually marry. So I did pop mine in the fridge for about two hours, and you can if you want go as long as overnight. And then once we pull that out to finish it off, I'm going to dump in a whole bunch of freshly chopped cilantro, and then we'll give that a toss and a taste, since it might be perfect, but it probably won't be. And after sampling, I almost always add another pinch of salt. Oh, and some people do like to add some diced avocado to this, which would be fine, but I feel like they kind of get lost in this, so I'd probably prefer to save that for guacamole. And that's it. Once that's looking and tasting exactly how we want, we'll go ahead and serve it up in some type of cowboy caviar appropriate bowl. And some folks say to drain this first, since it is going to be very juicy, but I don't. I want those juices in the bowl. Since you're smarter dippers, we'll dig down in and enjoy that element as well. And obviously we're going to want a lot of crispy corn chips to serve with it. And that's it. What I'm calling the ultimate cowboy caviar was ready to enjoy. So I grabbed a chip and dipped in. And that, my friend, has to be one of the greatest party dips of all time. And if you're thinking dip, isn't that just a salad? No, if you ate it with a spoon or a fork, it would be a salad. If you're dipping chips in, it's a dip. That's how you know. And by the way, I'm usually not a big fan of these scoop style chips. I mean, if you can't manage with a regular tortilla chip, maybe you shouldn't be eating dips. But here, because of the very specific size and shape of the ingredients, I think the scoop style is absolutely perfect. Plus, since there is a lot of juice involved here, these kind of chips are very effective if you Oh, and regarding my movie reference earlier, that was not just a joke. Once you start eating this, it's virtually impossible to stop. So please be sure to make plenty. Okay, I'm not sure which snack at your party is going to be the last one to go, but it will not be this one. This will probably be the first. And as far as alternative versions go, if you were to grill some fresh corn on the cob and slice that off and use it in this, then you'd be enjoying the ultimate cowboy caviar, since that little bit extra work would make this even more incredible. But having said that, even made with some unremarkable frozen corn, this really truly is one of the greatest party dips of all time. And whether you have a big old posse coming to the ranch, or you just want something amazing to snack on around the house, I really do hope you give this a try soon. So please follow the links below for the ingredient amounts, a printable written recipe, and much more info as usual. And as always, enjoy!