Tex Mex Chickpea Salad

Today, we are making a super easy, fun, and colourful Tex Mex salad! This high protein vegan chickpea recipe is a dream come true. A fresh meal that will have you full and happy in no time! 

I get this question a lot: what's the difference between Mexican food and Tex Mex food? Theres a long answer to this question so here is the short version. We can say that Mexican food refers to what is traditionally served in Mexico. While Tex-Mex is a cuisine originated in the border region of Mexico and the US. 

As a result, we find the use of a few elements of Mexican cuisine combined with some American all-time favourites. So, in Tex Mex cuisine you will find colourful veggies, beans, tortillas - mostly flour, cumin, smoked paprika, and hard shell tacos.

The line between the two is very thin. Most of the ingredients used in Tex Mex food are found in Mexican cuisine but not always the other way around. For example, make sure you leave out hard shell tacos, you won't find them anywhere in Mexico and you might even get a funny look if you go around asking for them. 

Tex Mex cuisine is super fun, colourful, and easy to make. And, I noticed it's really easy to make high protein vegan meals just by combining ingredients, they already use. We have options when it comes to plant based protein in Tex Mex food. 

We love how flavourful Tex Mex food is. The best part is that you only need to stock a few different spices to get the taste we are after. We used that as inspiration and I decided to only use paprika, salt, and peeper to season our chickpea salad. 

We have all sorts of colourful ingredients that are not just full of flavour but also loaded with nutrients. You need red and yellow bell pepper, sweet corn kernels, some cilantro, and my absolute favourite, avocado. 

The beauty of this Tex Mex salad is we only need to dice everything and mix it together. To make it a high protein vegan meal, we are adding chickpeas. That easy! And to bind all these ingredients together, we need an extra virgin olive oil and lime juice, this will serve as a dressing.

Last but certainly not least, we need fresh cilantro which will add hints of lemony, nutty, earthy freshness to our food. I leave it till the end just because I know people either love or hate cilantro. So, if you are in the latter category, just leave it out. 

I made this chickpea recipe really easy to follow. You can make it in as little as 10 minutes! And you can have it for lunch, as a side, and even pack a lunchbox with this beauty. It keeps really well and the longer the veggies and the chickpeas sit in the dressing, the better. 

There you go! This Tex Mex chickpea salad is a delicious, super healthy, high protein vegan meal that you can make in the blink of an eye! Enjoy!