Black-eyed peas: Hoppin' John for New Year's Day

Hoppin’ John is a Southern dish of black-eyed peas and rice traditionally served on New Year’s Day.

|
Kitchen Report
Hoppin' John combines black-eyed peas, rice, and heat from pepper and onions. Salt bacon boosts the flavor. This is a Southern dish traditionally served on New Year's Day.

Living in the North for most of my life I really didn’t encounter the tradition of eating black-eyed peas for New Year's Day until I started following The Runaway Spoon, a food blogger living in Memphis, Tenn. Perre feels very strongly that one must eat black-eyed peas on New Year’s Day to bring good fortune for the coming year.

I always like these hopeful outlooks on the New Year. It is as if we are saying, “That last year was rough. Let’s do this new one right, people!”

Hoppin’ John is a fortifying dish that’s perfect for a northern tradition, too, with its frigid January days, and easy enough to give you a much welcome break from more complicated holiday meals.

Like most food traditions the lineage and history of Hoppin’ John is not that clear. It’s been traced to Southern slave traditions, Southern Jewish traditions, sometimes involves a buried coin (the person who bites the coin will draw riches), collared greens, and cornbread. I’ll leave you to search the interwebs to satisfy your curiosity.

Nathalie Dupree and Cynthia Graubart offer their own explanation in their excellent cookbook “Mastering the Art of Southern Cooking“:

“The black-eyed pea isn’t really a pea at all; it’s a bean. Be that as it may, black-eyed peas are served all year long but with special emphasis to bring luck on New Year’s Day. Combined with an equal amount of cooked rice, they make a traditional African dish, now called Hoppin’ John, and form a complete protein – a vital source of food for what President Franklin D. Roosevelt called ‘the shoeless South’ during the Depression and other hard times.”

Many Hoppin’ John recipes begin with a pot of dried black-eyed peas, soaked and cooked a long time with pork fatback. Living in the fast-paced North, and not finding any dried black-eyed peas or fatback at my local market, I opted for the canned version, which Nathalie and Cynthia say is totally acceptable.

I experimented with pork loin bacon and a few slices of pork salt cooked in with the onions to try and recreate that flavor-infused slow-cooked version. But really, all you need is a few slices of regular bacon. I had some leftover cooked rice on hand, so this came together really fast.

Happy New Year!

Hoppin’ John, quick version 
Serves 2

1 15-ounce can black-eyed peas, drained
2-3 slices bacon
1/2 hot red pepper, diced
1/2 medium onion, chopped
1 cup cooked rice
Freshly ground pepper, to taste
Salt, to taste
Optional: salt pork

1. Open can of black-eyed peas, drain, set aside.

2. Over medium high heat, cook bacon 3 minutes per side. Remove from pan. When cool cut into bite-sized pieces.

3. Dice the pepper and and chop the onion. Add the pepper and onion to the bacon drippings in the pan and reduce heat, cook through until onions are translucent. (If you are adding salt pork, add it to the onions and pepper. You won't need to add more salt to this version!)

4. Add the black-eyed peas, cooked rice, and bacon to the pan and combine, stirring until heated through. Salt and pepper to taste. Serve in bowls.

Hoppin’ John
From “Mastering the Art of Southern Cooking” by Nathalie Dupree and Cynthia Graubart

“Traditionally, since this was a New Year’s dish, the peas were dried, but of course, canned or frozen are substituted and seen nearly all year long.”

Serves 6 to 8

2 cups dried black-eyed peas, lady peas, or cowpeas
1 piece fatback, hog jowl, or other smoked meat, slashed in several places
1 hot red pepper
1 medium onion, chopped
Salt
Freshly ground black pepper
1 cup uncooked rice
4 tablespoons drippings, preferably bacon

1. Pour boiling water over the dried peas in a large pot and set aside while preparing other ingredients. When ready to proceed, drain the peas and discard the water.

2. Add fresh water to the peas. Add the fatback, hot red pepper, onion, salt, and black pepper. Bring to the boil; cover reduce heat and simmer until the peas are nearly tender; about 45 minutes to 1 hour, skimming off the foam as needed. Add more water as needed.

3. Continue cooking, covered, until the peas are tender. Remove the peas with a slotted spoon, reserving enough liquid in the pot (about 3 cups) to cook the rice.

4. Bring reserved liquid to the boil, add the rice, and return to the boil; cover. Reduce heat and simmer until the rice is cooked, about 30 minutes.

5. Return peas to the pot, stir together, and cook for a few minutes more. Add drippings to flavor the dish, taste, and adjust seasonings. Turn out into a large dish and serve. This may be made into a tasty salad at a later time.

Variations: Add cooked, frozen, or drained canned black-eyed or crowder peas, and cooked bacon to cooked rice and heat together.

Related post on Kitchen Report: Three Kinds of Fondue (cheese, oil, chocolate)

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

QR Code to Black-eyed peas: Hoppin' John for New Year's Day
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/The-Culture/Food/Stir-It-Up/2014/1231/Black-eyed-peas-Hoppin-John-for-New-Year-s-Day
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe