Easy black-eyed peas salad

Do you love salads for dinner? Then make this easy black-eyed peas salad recipe and serve it with mashed potatoes or pasta for a quick weekday dinner. This vegan and gluten-free salad is so easy to make and can be carried for lunch as well.

I love bean salads as they are easy to make and keep us full for a long time. These are tasty and healthy at the same time. I like to add steamed or baked potatoes or sweet potatoes to this salad and pack it as a lunch box item.

Ingredients

Black-eyed peas: I used home-cooked black-eyed peas to make this salad. You can quickly cook the dried peas at home. You can use canned black-eyed peas also to make the salad. If using canned peas, drain the peas and rinse them once in clean water.

Veggies: This recipe uses cucumber, tomato, and red onion. And I like to serve this salad with potatoes to make the salad as a complete meal. In this salad, you can use other veggies like red bell pepper, carrots, green beans, sweet potatoes, cauliflower, broccoli, and kale. Steam or bake the veggies and add them to the salad.

Salad dressing: I used lemon juice, olive oil, pepper powder, and salt as a salad dressing for this quick recipe. I have added a little cumin powder to make it more flavorful. You can add chopped jalapenos or red chili flakes to make the salad spicy.

Instructions

Step 1: Cook the black-eyed peas

• Soak the black-eyed peas for 6 to 8 hours. (optional)
• Wash the soaked or dried black-eyed peas and add them to the Instant pot inner pot.
• Then add water, salt and close the Instant pot with its lid. Seal the pressure valve. Use 2 cups of water for soaked peas and 3 cups of water for dried black-eyed peas.
• Select manual or pressure cook mode and cook it for 5 minutes on high pressure for soaked black-eyed peas. Cook it for 16 minutes on high pressure for dried black-eyed peas.
• Once the Instant pot finishes cooking, wait for 10 minutes and manually release the pressure. Strain the cooked peas, and keep them aside.

Step 2: Prep the ingredients

• Boil, steam, or bake the potatoes and keep them aside. I use boiled and diced potatoes in this salad recipe.
• Finely chop onion, tomatoes, cucumber, and cilantro.

Step 3: Make the black-eyed peas salad

• Take a mixing bowl. Add olive oil, lemon juice, salt, and freshly ground black pepper powder to the bowl and whisk together.

• Add finely chopped onions, tomatoes, cucumber, cilantro leaves, and potato cubes (if using).

• Mix it well so that salad dressing is coated well with the veggies.

• Then goes boiled black-eyed peas and sunflower seeds.

• Mix everything well and serve the delicious black eyed peas salad immediately.

Recipe Notes & Variations

• Don't like black-eyed peas? Then make this salad recipe with chickpeas or kidney beans.
• Wanna exclude potatoes? You can easily omit potatoes and have this peas salad as a side dish. Potatoes will make this salad a complete meal. 
• Instead of potatoes, you can use cooked pasta also to make this black eyed peas salad.
• If you do not like raw onions taste or smell, you can safely skip them.
• I used tomatoes & cucumbers in this salad. You could use other veggies like steamed cauliflower, broccoli, carrots, green beans. 
• Diced avocado and steamed or grilled sweet corn will also taste good in this salad.
• Are you out of cilantro leaves? You can omit the leaves. Other herbs like mint, dill leaves, basil leaves, green onions will flavor the salad. 
• Add salt and sunflower seeds to the salad just before serving. Salt will release water from the veggies, and salad will become watery.

Serving suggestions

If you use potatoes to make this salad, you can serve the salad as the main dish. And this can be a complete meal also.

If you are skipping potatoes in this recipe, serve the black-eyed peas salad with pasta, mashed potatoes, or toasted sourdough bread.

Storage

This salad keeps well for a day in the refrigerator. But I highly recommend skipping onions if you intend to store the salad in the fridge. Onions might smell bad.
I do not freeze this salad and instead, freeze the cooked black-eyed peas and make this salad when needed.

FAQ

Here are the other salad recipes that you might like from my blog.

Millet salad with veggies

Chickpeas cucumber salad

Kidney beans avocado salad

Peanut cucumber salad

You will like my other black-eyed peas recipes on this blog as you are here.

Instant pot black-eyed peas curry

How to cook black-eyed peas

Black-eyed peas dip

Vegetable black-eyed peas soup

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Recipe