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Black Eyed Peas for New Year's Day........Anyone cooking these?


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I cook my black eyed peas in the crock pot and start them the night before or very early in the morning. I put salt pork in them to flavor them really well!! (add salt as needed) They are so yummy! We are also having collard greens.

 

I thought it was a southern thing (being from the south, myself)...greens and black eyed peas for the dinner so that you have wealth and health in the New Year!!

 

So to the Forum....Happy New Year!!! And enjoy those peas!!!

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We ate them this morning. DH thinks they are supposed to be the first thing you eat. They were delicious, probably all the sausage and onions. The 8 extra teenagers who spent the night seemed a little taken aback by their breakfast, however. :D Good thing DS made pancakes, too.

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I cook my black eyed peas in the crock pot and start them the night before or very early in the morning. I put salt pork in them to flavor them really well!! (add salt as needed) They are so yummy! We are also having collard greens.

 

I thought it was a southern thing (being from the south, myself)...greens and black eyed peas for the dinner so that you have wealth and health in the New Year!!

 

So to the Forum....Happy New Year!!! And enjoy those peas!!!

 

Yours in red: That is certainly my newfound understanding of it -- here's what I read and the link to it:

 

Here’s a Deep South shocker: the Southern tradition of eating black-eyed peas on New Year’s Day originated with the Jews. (I guess the salt pork floating atop the pot threw me off.)

Wikipedia says Jews have been eating black-eyed peas for good luck at Rosh Hashana since 500 CE, and Sephardic and Israeli Jews still do today. How come none of my Jewish friends bothered to share this with me?

Apparently the Southern black-eyed pea tradition originated with Sephardic Jews who settled in Georgia back in the 1730’s. The pork addition doesn’t need much explanation. We Southerners can’t cook anything without throwing in a hunk of the stuff.

Although I love the way pork flavors black-eyed peas, I don’t especially like a hunk the size of an old shoe swimming in the middle. This year I decided to change that. Thick slice the salt pork, then cut it into pieces a person might actually want to eat. Next, fry up those little bite-size nuggets. Not only is golden brown a better look than gray boiled, there are also renderings for sautéing onions and peppers to flavor the beans.

Now it’s time to add the beans and liquid. I’ve always used water, but this year I switched to more flavorful chicken broth. Bring all this to a boil. Reduce heat to low and simmer. Keep cooking the beans until they start to break down and turn the pot juices from translucent to opaque. Otherwise you’ll end up with watery, wan beans. Salt the beans only after they have fully softened. (Salt too soon and they never will.)

Now they’re ready to eat. You’ll need cornbread. Vinegar’s nice too, and if you like heat, vinegar-soaked peppers (aka pepper sauce) is even better. A little crunch in the form of minced red onion is a nice foil to the soft pork and beans.

And the final Southern touch: drop a coin into the pot for good luck. This year for the first time ever (battling the Great Recession), I’m dropping in more than one.

 

http://threemanycooks.com/conversations/lucky-new-year/

 

DH went to the store for me this a.m., and he said that near the salt pork, all the fixins' for the dish were there -- so that was easy. He also remarked that last night when he went to Wegman's and Safeway, there were at least 4 people in each store asking where the black eyed peas were and were the salt pork was.:001_smile: Happy New Year.

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huhh, some ppl don't eat blackeyed peas on New Year's day?

:scared:

How do they get through the rest of the year?

 

Should we stage an intervention?

 

or are you just pulling my leg?

 

Yes, I just put them on and we'll have them for supper.

 

 

It's true. It's not just homeschooling mythology. :lol:

 

I had never even HEARD of the "blackeye peas on New Year's Day" tradition until I started homeschooling! :001_huh:

 

So, I shall ask again: How can you cook them so that they will NOT taste like dirt? I made them last year, had one bite and that was enough for me. Yuck!

 

(I do eat other fruits and vegetables and beans. It's not like I'm all "ewww, it grew in the DIRT, so it must taste like dirt". They really taste just like dirt to me. And I had three older brothers growing up, I KNOW the taste of dirt! :glare:

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I cook my black eyed peas in the crock pot and start them the night before or very early in the morning. I put salt pork in them to flavor them really well!! (add salt as needed) They are so yummy! We are also having collard greens.

 

I thought it was a southern thing (being from the south, myself)...greens and black eyed peas for the dinner so that you have wealth and health in the New Year!!

 

So to the Forum....Happy New Year!!! And enjoy those peas!!!

 

Southern born and Southern bred (and when I die, I'll be Southern dead) . . . I'm so homesick.

 

I may be an exile but I still eat my blackeyed peas.

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Oh my! I hadn't thought of black eyed peas on New Years in may years!

 

Years ago, when I was maybe 10 or 12, my Dad announced that it was a tradition in Texas (we lived in California but he was from Texas) and it seemed we did it for 1 or 2 years maybe. However, my mother chose to use the canned variety and I later discovered the frozen/fresh varieties and much prefer them.

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Yep, had them last night, will have them again today. I need a double dose of luck in the New Year!:D

 

For variation, we're having them Turkish style. MIL cooked them so I don't have a recipe, but they sure are yummy!

 

One NYE (living in the PNW) I'd forgotten the peas and rushed to the store before it closed to get some. It was just me and an old black man in the bean aisle. We both smiled and nodded in a conspiratorial way - both Southerners out of the South looking for our peas. And peace.:tongue_smilie:

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Though my husband grew up in Florida, his family is from Tennessee, so I make Hoppin' John and cornbread for him every year. We skip the greens because none of us like them (though some years I make spinach). I enjoy the dish too, but it's not something I *have* to have on New Year's Day. My family didn't have a traditional New Year's dish, so I don't mind doing this since I didn't have to give up a tradition of my own for his.

 

I soaked the beans last night, and started cooking around 10 this morning. We don't actually have a sit down time on New Year's Day -- we all just get some to eat whenever we feel like it throughout the day.

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I am going to pretend I didn't hear that. Lalalalalalalalalallalalalallalllaaaaa

 

The one good thing about moving to Boston was that no one I knew was pushy about eating black-eyed peas and cooked greens for New Year's Day dinner.

 

I greatly dislike Grits, too. Put that in your pipe and smoke it! :D

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Black-eyed peas are how I tell if I am really starving -- because I'd have to be at death's door from starvation to eat them!

 

 

:lol::lol::lol:

All due respect to P-dub, but she is not Southern, and neither is that recipe. Black eyed peas are Southern.

 

I am cooking my peas and have had my first black eyed pea sandwich of the day. Hoppin John tonight. With mountain oysters. Love them. To death.

 

Help me out here, what is Hoppin John? I googled it and the recipe looks to me like the black eyed peas recipe.:confused:

 

You just haven't tried my recipe!

:lol::lol::lol:Dd10 LOVES Grits! So I am making grits to go with the black eyed peas.

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Do you cook them in a way that makes them taste unlike dirt? If so,.....HOW?

 

Dirt? What do you mean? :confused: They don't taste like pure dirt, they taste like dirt mixed with dried shrimp! The black eye peas I'm eating for breakfast don't taste like that though, because dh has mixed them into a home made tomato based sauce. They're good.

 

:)

Rosie- who would never have imagined that black eye peas were anyone's tradition for any reason and is tickled to know some people can buy them out of the freezer section. I don't think we even have tins.

Edited by Rosie_0801
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I found the recipe last night on a link from PW. Beans are soaking in boiling water which speeds the soaking process so it should only take a couple of hours.

 

Should be interesting. My kids are totally grossed out at the thought of there being a coin in their dinner. :lol:

 

http://threemanycooks.com/conversations/lucky-new-year/

 

I planned to make them today, but woke up this morning with a stomach bug, so dh is making them. He's awesome. :)

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That's funny... we were at Aldi the other day and people were picking these up from a HUGE stack of bean bags. I remembered that some folks have a tradition of eating BEPs on NYD, so we picked up a pack, too.

 

But then I remembered that we could make a recipe that my friends from Ghana taught me years ago. You cook BEPs, then add in a can of corned beef, onions, tomatoes, and (of course) hot peppers. Ghanaians like their food HOT (enough to make me sweat). They said the "tinned meat" is a real treat when city-dwellers visit their families in the villages during Christmas time, so this dish is traditional around Christmas.

 

We'll make this sometime this week.

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After the peas are soft, add plenty of cajun spices and some sugar. That makes them more or less palatable, but still :ack2:. It works for lentils too.

 

ETA: Fresh or frozen peas are the least likely to taste like dirt. Dried can be decent with spices and sausage. Cans? Don't bother unless you're really and truly hungry.

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I was pleasantly surprised by the frozen peas and collards. I think that's the way to go from now on- no more washing and washing and washing those greens and then chopping forever and no more picking through the peas forever and trying to remember to soak them overnight (I'm easily distracted).

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