An evolving main dish soup with terrible nomenclature.

I have been making this recipe for so long that, even coming back from my cooking hiatus, I didn’t need to look up the base recipe. This was a good thing, because I wasn’t even sure what the base recipe was.

After much consideration, I remembered that this dish was originally inspired by a dish made by Emeril¹ back when the Food Network wasn’t the Game Show Network for foodies².

I remember making this recipe more or less as listed a couple times before seeing a post about a sausage, black-eyed peas, and greens soup that REALLY inspired me³⁴⁵.

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3.5 from 1 vote

Black-eyed pea, sausage, and greens soup

Author: John R Cooking Method: Simmering Cuisine: American, Portugese Courses: Main Course Recipe Keys: G greens P peas S sausage S soup

Difficulty: Beginner Cook Time 45 mins

Ingredients

Scale

1/2x 1x 2x 3x

• 2 tbsp olive oil
• 1 medium onion (thinly sliced)
• 1 lb beer bratwursts (or sausage of choice, thinly sliced)
• 3 clove minced garlic
• 1 lb dried black-eyed peas (soaked and drained)
• 1 bunch mustard or turnip greens (washed and stemmed, then torn into smaller pieces)
• 16 oz dark beer (I used a German doppelbock)
• 2 pinch kosher salt
• 2 pinch ground pepper blend

Instructions

1. Place a Dutch oven on the stovetop over medium-high heat. Add olive oil and heat until shimmering. Add onions and sauté until beginning to brown, 4-6 minutes. Add bratwurst and cook until pink dissipates, 5-7 minutes. Add minced garlic and cook until fragrant, approximately 1 minute. Add dark beer and deglaze pan, then add the drained soaked black-eyed peas and greens. Cover with water, then add salt and pepper. Stir to combine. Bring pot to a rolling boil, then lower the heat and simmer uncovered until flavors meld and peas are tender, at least 30 minutes. 

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The recipe calls for soaked peas. The best way is to do this overnight, of course — but if you’re like me, you never think about that requirement until you start to cook. Fortunately, the HIP Cooking blog has instructions⁶ and videos on how to use a pressure cooker to quick-soak beans and peas.

Thoughts:

1) My wife had been asking me to make this ever since I started cooking again, so I think it’s fair to say it’s a fan favorite.

2) It’s also fair to say it tastes better than it looks, because it doesn’t look particularly great.

Verdict:

Taste: 7.5/10. It was good, but I’ve made better versions in the past. I don’t think I got the seasonings quite right (i.e. I should have used something more than salt and pepper). The tasting panel approved, and the gluten-sensitive member did not have any issues.
Availability: 8/10. I don’t always have a suitable sausage in the fridge or a bunch of greens waiting to be transformed, but they’re ingredients that can be easily used in other dishes.
Story: 6.5/10. When a dish is memorable enough to be requested ages later, it can’t be bad.

1. https://www.emerils.com/124425/emerils-new-style-caldo-verde ↩︎
2. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, says the guy who binged the first 16 seasons or so of Guy’s Grocery Games, or will stop almost anything he’s doing to catch a repeat of Iron Chef America. ↩︎
3. Try as I might, I can’t find the post that really inspired this dish. It was a personal cooking blog that most likely vanished into the ether when the hosting plan ran out. I did find similar recipes that would have been published by the time I found that one. One of them is from The Kitchn, and the second is from Serious Eats. I do not recall seeing either of these recipes before. ↩︎
4. https://www.thekitchn.com/soup-recipe-blackeyed-pea-soup-135797 ↩︎
5. https://www.seriouseats.com/easy-sausage-kale-and-black-eyed-pea-soup-wit ↩︎
6. https://www.hippressurecooking.com/cannellini-and-mint-bean-salad-lesson-4-quick-soaking-beans/ ↩︎