The Hermits' Rest

I was asked how I cook black-eyed peas for the big meal on New Year’s Day. Now, if you’re used to reading monetized blogs, you’re probably ready to have to read a long story, scroll past many repetitive ads, and suffer through much blathering to get to the recipe (or knitting/crochet pattern, etc.).

This blog is for me and random people who care about nature, horses, and/or anxiety, so no monetizing will occur. And I just have a brief story about black-eyed peas at New Year’s.

I have mentioned that this is my favorite meal probably every year since 2018 and no doubt I mentioned it in my two earlier blogs as well. I like to blog and eat peas, usually not simultaneously. I love this meal for the flavors, but also because it’s one of the few connections I have with the past few generations of my family. Rural families in the Deep South always must have their peas for good luck and greens for money (the meaning varies).

In my family growing up, that meant black-eyed peas cooked with ham hock, rice to put the beans on (not cooked together), collard greens cooked with more ham hock or bacon, cornbread, and green onions sliced up for garnish. You were encouraged to put homemade hot pepper vinegar or something similar on the beans. I thought this was a gourmet meal, not very inexpensive ingredients combined to be delicious. I did realize it was also what Black people ate, since we exchanged dishes with black friends (in the 60s that was my grandmother’s maid and her extended family).

I still make the same meal, carefully passed down from grandmother to mother to older sister to me. Its ingredients vary depending on what’s available, but it’s always good. I do. Now I have to add a pork loin or ham for people who insist on a slab of meat at each meal. Traditions change! It’s all good. Okay, recipes, or guidelines:

Black-eyed Peas as I Make Them

Note: ideally start this the night before

Ingredients

• 1 package dried black-eyed peas
• 4 cups broth (your choice; we can’t use chicken unless one family member is absent)
• 1 onion chopped
• 1 smoked ham hock OR package genuine andouille sausage sliced up OR leftover Christmas ham OR bacon (least favorite option)
• Cajun seasoning OR Oh Shit seasoning
• Optional bay leaf if your spouse doesn’t hate it
• Additional salt and pepper

Night before or early in the morning, rinse the peas and cover with a lot of water. Soak overnight in a large pot or at least four hours. Beans will expand.

Next day drain and rinse the peas and return to the pot. Cover with the broth (this adds flavor; vegetarians can use vegetable broth and skip the meat). You will probably have to add water to keep the peas (really beans) covered. Add onion, meat, and seasonings.

Bring the liquid to a boil. Do not be concerned if there’s scummy froth; just stir it back in. Turn down the heat and let cook until you have the right amount of delicious liquid in with the solids, then cover and simmer a long time.

The key is to cook them to the mushy stage. So I cook at least three hours. The longer it cooks, the more the flavors merge.

Serve over rice and top with green onions and any hot sauce you like. But taste it first. It’s so good.

Bonus: Collard Greens

• 2 or 3 bunches of collard greens. They have huge dark green leaves. Mustard greens are good, too, but more bitter.
• One chopped onion
• Broth to cook in )amount varies). I also use Better Than Bouillon sometimes.
• Meat for seasoning—the same meat you used with the beans or something different. You don’t need much; add it to taste.
• Salt, pepper, and a pinch of sugar (my mom said to do this to cut bitterness)

Chop the greens. Important: slice off the thick stems. Fold the leaf over and you can quickly eliminate them, so your chickens can eat them. Greens are more pleasant to eat without stems. But some people like them. Chop them enough that people won’t get huge long strips of them on their forks.

This will look like a lot of greens. It isn’t. They shrink.

Put them and the onions in a pot big enough to cover them. Add 1-2 cups of liquid and cook covered on high, stirring a couple of times until they are wilted and you see there really aren’t that many.

Add the meat and seasonings. Simmer a ridiculously long time. You can eat them after an hour or so, but the flavors develop during the long cooking time.

Serve along with the peas and rice. Use cornbread to soak up extra cooking liquid (pot likker).

If you are lucky enough to have leftover cornbread and greens, pour warmed up liquid over a slice of cornbread and eat it for breakfast.

Yeah. That was concise…not really.