Happy New Year!!!!: Black-Eyed Pea & Sausage Soup
Hello friends. Happy New Year! I hope 2016 was a good year for you and you rang in 2017 with friends and family near by. My hubby and I had a quiet evening on New Year's Eve, relaxing on the couch and watching the remake of "The Magnificent Seven". I love westerns so was excited to see this one. The original has, in my opinion, the best western theme song...ever. I was happy it was included in the remake as well.
Anywho, on to the post for today. When you think of food and New Years what do you think of...black-eyed peas and greens, right? Right. My uncle has made black-eyed peas on New Years Day as long as I can remember and I know LOTS of people hold the same tradition. Now, in my world.... my dad... he LOVES beans, of all kinds. I learned on Thursday, last week, that there is one bean he absolutely cannot stand..... and that's black-eyed peas. Who would have thought? I had no idea.... 40 years and I'm just now learning this about my Dad. Mind, blown.
I digress. Back to New Years.... One of our friends was coming over on New Years Day. It's always a good excuse to experiment when Mark is coming. He and Jason are willing and eager guinea pigs. We planned on watching the premiere of Sherlock (finally!!!) and playing games, after eating of course. With feeding two hungry men, I decided to make Cabbage Rolls and a Black-Eyed Pea & Sausage Soup. I had never had a black-eyed pea until yesterday. 2017 is a year that started off with firsts. Haha!
For today, I'll tell you about the Black-Eyed Pea & Sausage Soup. I researched a lot of recipes and finally settled on one that sounded good and looked like I could tweak easily. Tweak the recipe... why, would you do that, you ask? I wanted to use my trusty pressure cooker, of course! And I almost never follow a recipe to the letter. I usually tweak something.
My tweaks on the recipe were:
- Prepare your black-eyed peas in the pressure cooker
- Use a mixture of greens.
- I bought a bag at my local grocery store of mixed southern greens that were already chopped. It contained collard, mustard and turnip greens
- Rinse and dry thoroughly
- Sort out an tough, woody stems
- Add a little crushed red pepper
Here's what the finished product looked like.... and the men approved with empty bowls.
Tomorrow I'll post the recipe for the Cabbage Rolls. Stay tuned......
-MamaFin
The RECIPE:
INGREDIENTS
- 1 tablespoon, plus 1 tsp extra-virgin olive oil, divided
- 1 cup chopped yellow onion
- 1 cup peeled and diced carrots
- ½ cup diced celery
- 1 tablespoon fresh minced garlic
- 1 (14-ounce) package smoked sausage, sliced (I used Boar's Head)
- 1 teaspoon thyme leaves
- 4 cups chicken broth, plus more for cooking beans, divided
- 1 (28-ounce) can diced tomatoes
- several handfuls chopped collard greens, tough stems removed
- 2 cups of Black-Eyed Peas (cooked in the pressure cooker)
- ¼ teaspoon salt (or to taste)
- ¼ teaspoon pepper (or to taste)
- 1 tsp crushed red pepper (or to taste)
- Prepare beans in pressure cooker. 1 cup of dry beans will yield approximately 2 cups cooked.
- Sort, rinse and drain dry beans (I did not presoak mine).
- Add beans to pressure cooker insert, then cover beans with chicken broth
- Add 1 tsp of olive oil to beans to reduce foaming.
- Cook on high pressure for 34 minutes and then a natural release.
- Remove from pressure cooker (do not keep on warm, they will keep cooking) and set aside.
- In a dutch oven or large soup pot, heat oil over medium heat. Add sausage slices, crushed red pepper, onions, carrots and celery and cook for approximately 7-8 minutes or until vegetables are tender, stirring frequently. Add garlic and thyme and stir to combine.
- Add 4 cups chicken broth and tomatoes with juice. Increase heat to high and bring to a boil. Add chopped collards and stir well to combine. Reduce heat to maintain a gentle simmer, cover and simmer for 15 minutes or until collard greens are tender. Stir in cooked black-eyed peas, season with salt and pepper and cook for an additional 5-10 minutes until beans are heated through.
Adapted from The Blond Cook - Original Recipe:
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