Blackeyed peas!

[Blackwater]

Any good ol' country boy knows, black eyed peas are a staple here in the South. If you don't like black eyed peas, you ain't really Southern! Just had a good plate full of them tonight, and thought I'd share the way my wife cooks them. She just drops them in a pressure cooker, with a tablespoon of olive oil and a cube of chicken bullion. Then she cooks them about 15 min. under pressure, and ... serve. I like to dice fresh raw onion finely, and mix it in with mine. Sometimes, just for variety and sake of experiment, I'll douse them with some pepper vinegar, or LA hot sauce. You just can't make them taste bad, at least that I've found.

Probably my utmost favorite peas are the little pink eyes. All peas and beans have a rather delicate flavor, and each one has its own little character in taste. I have yet to find a bean or pea I don't like. I guess us country boys are born hungry, and learn early to appreciate most anything that's spiced right, and lightly.

Peas and beans always leave me with that "basking afterglow" after a meal that bespeaks real satisfaction, and is a simple and powerful pleasure. Y'all had any beans or peas lately? What kind of variations or special handling do you give yours? I've tried them every way I could think of, and need help with more ideas, just for drill, if nothing else.

[DLCTEX]

In our area black eyes are picked while still green, but mature, then shelled and canned or frozen on a cookie sheet and then kept frozen in a cloth bag (pillow case) until cooked. This method permits removal of any amount you want. These have a very different flavor from peas allowed to mature and dry on the vine. I like both. We like to include a few "snaps", immature pods broken in pieces in our peas. These are not served over rice, but are a stand alone dish, often seasoned with bacon. The pink eyes are called cream peas and are prepared the same as black eyes and have a subtle difference in flavor.

[DougGuy]

In our area black eyes are picked while still green, but mature, then shelled and canned or frozen on a cookie sheet and then kept frozen in a cloth bag (pillow case) until cooked. This method permits removal of any amount you want. These have a very different flavor from peas allowed to mature and dry on the vine. I like both. We like to include a few "snaps", immature pods broken in pieces in our peas. These are not served over rice, but are a stand alone dish, often seasoned with bacon. The pink eyes are called cream peas and are prepared the same as black eyes and have a subtle difference in flavor.

^^^^ Melikey already!!

I cook them with the Georgia Spring Onion and garlic, and bacon or some other salt pork usually bacon.

The Spring Onions, are baby vidalias that they sell only in early spring, these onions when cooked with garlic in any kind of beans or peas or taters, cause a certain kind of sweetness to develop, the garlic and this particular green onion cancel each other out and the result is this unmistakeable flavor! You just have to try it, it's hard to describe, and no other onion that I know of can do this with garlic. I keep these spring onions in my freezer and use them year 'round.

[Boaz]

Love black eyed peas and cornbread !

[OS OK]

Love black eyed peas and cornbread !

Took the words right out of my mouth Boaz...only need to add some hot vinegar out of the pepper jar...YuuuM !

[Boaz]

In our area black eyes are picked while still green, but mature, then shelled and canned or frozen on a cookie sheet and then kept frozen in a cloth bag (pillow case) until cooked. This method permits removal of any amount you want. These have a very different flavor from peas allowed to mature and dry on the vine. I like both. We like to include a few "snaps", immature pods broken in pieces in our peas. These are not served over rice, but are a stand alone dish, often seasoned with bacon. The pink eyes are called cream peas and are prepared the same as black eyes and have a subtle difference in flavor.

Fresh shelled black eyed peas are even better than dried .

[Bzcraig]

Not a Southerner but love black eyed peas lots!

[JBinMN]

Good stuff! Along with spinach, collared greens, okra, etc..

My family is from the mountains of VA/N.C./Ga. & that area. I live here in MN, but was raised on such fixins & people around here think I am nuts for liking some of the things I eat.

I eat Grits too, with salt /pepper & butter(or gravy}, not Cream of wheat with sugar or syrup. And I like "Red eyed" gravy, the real stuff with the coffee & such in it.

Just made homemade butter milk biscuits & country sausage gravy a few minutes ago. Now that I am slobbering from reading this & the other topic about Pickled Pigs feet/pork hocks, I am hungry.
LOL

[square butte]

Well - I wish I had a mess of em on my kitchen counter right now. I think I'm gonna have to go to church hungry this morning. Wife is gone out to Idaho to visit the folks and I am behind on cooking jobs. You guys keep me thinkin about eating for sure

[jcren]

Around here it is purple hulls or pink eyes, both shelled "green". In my big cast iron pot, Brown a half pound of bacon, at least half a sweet onion and plenty of garlic. Add water (don't drain bacon grease) and peas and simmer until tender. If you want em as a meal, add the bone ( plenty of meat still on) from a smoked ham and did some cornbread to go with.

[Blackwater]

Yep, the fresh shelled are indeed the best of all. And I love the "snaps" in mine as well. Adds flavor and gee golly wow do I like it! I've never met a bean or pea I didn't like, but blackeyes are .... well, just "special," and I'm not really sure why. They just are to me.

And the comments about the hot pepper vinegar are right on, too, though I often eat them plain. LA hot sauce is also good, for a change of pace. And for me, those finely diced onions are the piece de' resistance! More onions, and less pepper vinegar. Less onions, and more pepper vinegar. It's ALL good. VERY good! I guess the moral to this story is I just like peas and beans, and those blackeyes have a special place in my heart, along with butter beans.

When I was in about the 9th grade, we had picked and shelled our first batch of butter beans of the year, and I was HONGRY! (way past simple "hungry!") I was trying to hurry Mom up, and she'd just washed and cloroxed the linoleum floor. She said I could take the big bowl of freshly cooked butter beans to the table if I was THAT hungry, and I grabbed them, not thinking they'd just come out of the pot. HOT, HOT, HOT!!!! I dropped the bowl, lowering it part of the way to the floor. The bowl retained about half the beans, and Mom looked at me, and I looked at her, and then, I said, "Well, Mom, you just washed and cloroxed the floor, didn't you? Do you think I could pick them up and we could eat them?" Mom enjoyed a great meal herself, and she pursed her lips, looked at what I'd done, and then slowly looked up at me and said, "Well, I doubt they'll kill us. If you want to, pick 'em up and we'll eat 'em." I was crestfallen at dropping that hot bowl of beans, but ... I bent down and got every one of those beans back in the bowl, and .... yep .... we ate every last one of them, and not one of us got sick.

Beans and peas are almost a religious rite of passage in my neck of the woods. I figure that event was an especially devout tip of the hat to their wondrous goodness? Either that, or a reflection of how hungry we sometimes got back then? We'd never have eaten them off a dirty floor, of course. It was one of those "judgment calls," and .... I'm neither sorry nor ashamed of what we did, under the circumstances when it happened.

Now I think I'll start a thread on Lima beans. It could take a while going through all the various beans and peas here!