Fresh, or fresh frozen purple hull peas, seasoned simply with salt pork, onion and chicken stock, made quick and easy in the Instant Pot.

Instant Pot Purple Hull Peas

Purple hull peas are my favorite southern pea!

They are part of the group of peas, that are really beans, and something that we love so much in the South. It's a summer favorite among many of us.

They are easy to grow too and easier to shell than they used to be when an afternoon of shelling once yielded sore and purple fingers!

A hot bean dip made with blackeye peas, cheese, andouille sausage, tomatoes, onion and chopped pickled jalapeno in a cream cheese and sour cream base.

Cheesy Hot Black-eyed Pea Dip

When you say Black-eyed Pea Dip, most folks think about Texas Caviar, or what I call Southern Caviar because all across the south, we tend to have our own versions, like my Mississippi Style Texas Caviar. It's a type of bean salsa, usually made using some form of an Italian dressing as a base.

This is not that.

This is more of a basic bean dip but made with black-eye peas instead of the more often used pintos or white beans.

Onion, sweet bell pepper and garlic, sautéed in bacon drippings, topped with black-eyed peas, chicken stock, chopped ham and a pork hock and cooked under pressure in the Instant Pot. 

Instant Pot Black-Eyed Peas

Black-eyed peas are always on my New Year's Day menu. Always. And... maybe I'm especially superstitious, but this year I think it's even more important to uphold that tradition, don't you?

Typically, I have made mine in the style of which I do most southern peas - using dried peas and cooked right on the stovetop - but, with the popularity of the Instant Pot {affil link} and other electronic pressure cookers, the past few years I've switched over to making them this way for the New Year's Day meal.

Classic Fresh Purple Hull Peas

A classic recipe for southern peas, in this case, fresh purple hulls, simply seasoned with bacon, onion, garlic, salt and pepper, perfect as a side dish or as a feature on a vegetable plate. Pictured here with my whiskey glazed baked ham, Dr. Weil's steamed broccoli and the cornbread from my cookbook {affil link}, made with stone ground cornmeal from the Smoky Mountains.

Fresh Purple Hull Peas

If I had to pick one of my favorite southern peas, it'd have to be purple hulls. I just love them, and they are super easy to grow and easy to find, even if you don't grow your own.

Purple hull peas get their name from the color of the hull, and it used to be that if you ever shelled any from the pod, your purple stained fingers would be a dead giveaway. It might be that most shelling takes place in an air conditioned home these days, rather than in a rocker on the front porch in the heat and humidity, but I've shelled several pounds at a time and didn't have issue with those colorful fingers.

A fresh tomato pasta sauce, made with garden vegetables - peppers, squash, zucchini, corn, eggplant, okra, beans - whatever you have! For a protein boost, add leftover roasted chicken, seasoned and sauteed shrimp, cooked ground beef, sausage, or other meats.

Garden Fresh Vegetable Spaghetti

I have been up to my ears in garden fresh tomatoes the past few weeks... not that it's a bad thing, don't get me wrong! It's just that as fast as I process some into sauce, I'm plucking a near equal amount off of the plants.

The last picking right before the tropical storm and steady coming!

Fresh or frozen baby lima beans or butter beans, slow simmered in a ham hock seasoned broth with onion, chicken base, salt and pepper, and finished with a nob of butter or bacon drippings - a definite summertime southern favorite.

Southern-Style Baby Lima Beans or Butterbeans

You can use this for both butterbeans or baby lima beans, both of which I love.

Southern Style Hissy Fit Warning... I love all kinds of butterbeans - big and small and speckled - and I don't understand for the life of me, why some southerners get all up in a tizzy about what they think a butter bean is, any more than what constitutes a "real" cornbread or whether a hoecake is flour or cornmeal based.

The internet has opened the south to all southerners and revealed that despite what we thought growing up, there is no one south. Truth is, how you cook in the south and what you call things in the south, depends on what part of the south you grew up in and how your mama did it, which is more likely than not to be different from how somebody else's mama did.

Southern purple hull peas are cooked down with salt pork or bacon, onion and simple seasonings, then finished with a Creole-style stewed tomato.

Purple Hull Peas with Creole Stewed Tomatoes

Summer is winding down and I sure hope y'all put up some purple hulls - I sure did!

Simple process really - good rinse, pick through, toss in some boiling water, boil for about 2 minutes, drain, plunge in ice water till cool, drain and bag. I've tried several methods of putting up, and in my experience, blanching keeps them better and they retain a fresher taste for a longer period of time in your freezer. I use my FoodSaver so I don't freeze them in water, though some folks do. So good to pull out a bag of fresh purple hulls in the middle of the winter, I'm tellin' ya!

Southern Field Peas and Snaps - Field peas cooked with green beans and served here with grilled smoked andouille sausage and cornbread.

Southern Field Peas and Snaps

It can be a little bit confusing when a Southerner talks about field peas, because kinda like with butter beans or what we mean when we say "Coke," they might be referring to any one of literally hundreds of Southern field peas.

Field peas, or cowpeas as we also know them, aren't really peas at all. They are beans that grow very well in the South because they are heat and drought tolerant and grow in just about any soil. They're categorized generally in four groups - crowder, cream, black-eyed and field peas, and there are many varieties to be found in each of those categories.

Lady cream peas, seasoned with smoked meat, onion, garlic and fresh herbs, served with a side of buttermilk sour cream cornbread and pictured here, with broiled chicken.

Southern-Style Lady Cream Peas

Even though white beans and red beans and rice are common weekly features here in the Deep South, I love beans of all kinds, and all I need is a good rainy day like we had yesterday to have an excuse to make some, no matter the temperature outside. Most often served as a side dish to other foods, southern peas are another love of mine, and I absolutely adore Lady Cream Peas for their buttery flavor and super creamy texture.

Known as field peas, cowpeas, and simply southern peas - though calling them peas is a bit of a misnomer, since they are all actually beans - they are identifiable by their small size and by the seed-eye you'll find on them, that tiny little familiar spot most of us immediately recognize from black-eyed peas the most.

Sausage and Sweet Potato Soup with Black-eyed Peas

A beef broth and tomato based soup made with smoked sausage, sweet potatoes, blackeye peas and cabbage.

Sausage and Sweet Potato Soup with Blackeye Peas

This fantastic soup was inspired by a recipe I saw while flipping through an old cookbook of mine, Is It Soup Yet? - A Cookbook for Soup Lovers. Actually it's a 1998 cookbook and not really all that old, but I guess in terms of a cookbook, it's practically vintage these days.

When I saw the combination of sweet potatoes with sausage in a soup, I have to say I was intrigued. Y'all already know I am pretty much a soup kinda gal anyway, but I have to say I absolutely adored this one. It will definitely be one for the regular rotation of favorite soups in my kitchen. The smoked sausage, sweet potato and black-eyed peas really are a fantastic combination of complimentary flavors I think you'll love.

Black-eyed Pea Jambalaya - Deep South Hoppin' John

Our Deep South version of the lowcountry favorite, Hoppin' John, this Black-eyed Pea Jambalaya contains bacon, ham, spicy smoked sausage, black-eyed peas and rice.

Deep South Hoppin' John

Black-eyed Pea Jambalaya is just the way we down here in The Deep South look at what most other southerners call Hoppin' John, but let me tell you. I have seen lots of folks, from magazines to big bloggers, being scolded by Hoppin' John purists all around the internet here lately for incorrectly referring to a dish of black-eyed peas as Hoppin' John, because the newer trend lately seems to be serving black-eyed peas over rice and calling it Hoppin' John.

As always, just scroll down the page a bit past the chit-chat to get right to the recipe and a printable, otherwise...

A great cold weather soup, this delicious beans and greens soup starts with a chicken base and includes both black-eyed peas and collard, mustard or turnip greens.

Greens and Black-Eyed Pea Soup

This super quick and easy recipe for Greens and Black-eyed Pea Soup is a basic take on good ole beans and greens, but in a soup form. You can use any greens and southern pea that you prefer, and it won't matter a bit.

Texas Caviar, done up my way, Mississippi style. Sort of a take on a bean salad really, it's simply a mixture of your favorite canned beans, usually the addition of corn, and a variety of chopped raw vegetables, all tossed in a vinaigrette.

Texas Caviar Salsa - Mississippi Style

There are loads of "caviar" recipes out there, most of them simply called Texas Caviar, though quite a few recipes hail from Mississippi too. Even though I can claim roots in both territories, I'm staying out of that debate.

Sort of a take on a bean salad really, it's simply a mixture of canned beans, usually corn, and a variety of chopped raw vegetables, all tossed in some kind of vinaigrette.

Mine is different from the classic Texas style version because I like to play around with the beans a bit.

New Years Southern Style Black-Eyed Peas

Black-eyed peas, cooked down with the Trinity, some bacon, jalapeno, a ham bone or ham hock and a few seasonings, makes for a traditional southern meal.

Southern-Style Black-Eyed Peas

Unlike my red beans and rice and my butter beans, I don't find it necessary to pre-boil and soak most southern peas like black-eyed peas. They cook up good and tender without that step in my little ole opinion.

Course you go right ahead and do that if ya want. Cooking to me is all about individualizing recipes to suit your fancy, not somebody else's and everybody - even here in The South - cooks things a little bit different from one another anyway.

Bean and Southern Pea Recipes

A collection of bean and southern pea recipes from Deep South Dish website.

If you make any of these recipes, I'd love to see your results! Just snap a photo and hashtag it #DeepSouthDish on social media or tag me @deepsouthdish on Instagram!

Bean Recipes

Southern Style Baked Beans

Pineapple Baked Beans

Spicy Meat Trio Barbecue Baked Beans

Slow Cooker Bourbon Baked Beans

Ranch Style Beans