To Pea or not to Pea

[JoNorvelleWalker]

I have a confession:  I have never tried to cook a non-frozen English pea.  Nor would I, save I saw some nice looking fresh peas this afternoon in the produce section, and the frozen peas were about a block away at the other end of the store.

 

Interestingly Mark Bittman and J. Kenji Lopez-Alt advocate the same cooking method for peas:  boil briefly, then saute in butter.  It is as if the monks have solved the tower of Hanoi problem and the world is about to end.

 

Meanwhile Joy of Cooking and @pazzaglia on (hippressurecooking.com) suggest pressure cooking fresh peas for two minutes.  Now, my favorite method for green beans is pressure cooking for thirty seconds.  And a pea is a little like a bean.

 

I was going to serve the peas tonight but have been caught up in existential questions.  Maybe tomorrow night.  But tell me, how shall I prepare my peas?

 

[huiray]

I would suspect those "fresh"" peas are now pretty starchy and getting more so by the day (and even hour). Fresh peas are best when cooked and eaten within 24 hours or so of being picked. The longer they are held, the more the sugars get converted to starches. Their flavor and texture depend on how "old" they are. (Which is why frozen peas are often really good, as the better brands shell and freeze the peas within hours of picking)

 

So - how to cook them? here's Francis Lam's take on it:

http://www.salon.com/2010/05/15/how_to_cook_peas_fresh_frozen_tender_starchy/ 

 

[JoNorvelleWalker]

1 hour ago, huiray said:

I would suspect those "fresh"" peas are now pretty starchy and getting more so by the day (and even hour). Fresh peas are best when cooked and eaten within 24 hours or so of being picked. The longer they are held, the more the sugars get converted to starches. Their flavor and texture depend on how "old" they are. (Which is why frozen peas are often really good, as the better brands shell and freeze the peas within hours of picking)

 

So - how to cook them? here's Francis Lam's take on it:

http://www.salon.com/2010/05/15/how_to_cook_peas_fresh_frozen_tender_starchy/ 

 

 

Well of course these "fresh" peas of mine are not really fresh.  We all know that.  A quick reading seems to me that Lam's peas are almost like being sautéed in fat, sort of how Bittman and Lopez-Alt suggest.

[liuzhou]

I really miss frozen peas. Haven't had any for about twenty years, but still have dreams about them!

 

The best are frozen in the fields where they are harvested, so are "fresher" than any fresh beans you are likely to encounter.

 

The little cans of French petits pois are great, too.

All I can get here are peas, canned or 'fresh', that are so old Chairman Mao went to school with their grandmother. You can boil them, pressure cook them, microwave them, beat them for weeks and they never soften. Horrible things.

 

Come back Mr Bird's Eye!

[lesliec]

Tinned peas - urgh!  Very unfortunate colour, as I remember (it's been years since I encountered one, I'm glad to say) and a taste, to paraphrase Douglas Adams, that is almost, but not quite, exactly unlike peas.

 

Frozen peas are great - I keep it simple and just microwave them.  Maybe a sprig of mint, unless they're already minted.

 

Fresh ones, if they're really fresh, I'd treat exactly the same.  But a quick sauté in butter doesn't sound like  a bad idea.  Don't know that I'd bother with boiling first; your average pea is not possessed of large volume.

[Lisa Shock]

Fresh peas are one of the wonderful plants I try to have in my garden when possible. There are a lot of vegetables you can get at the farmer's market, but picking peas right before cooking them, there's just nothing like it.

[shain]

I also never cook with fresh peas. I grow a few plants, but we snack the peas straight from the plants while watering the garden. On the rare occasions when I find truely fresh peas on the market I usually steam them in the pod straight away and then keep them as a snack. It will keep better once cooked. 

[Wayne]

 

I'm only growing sugar snap peas these days and because of my limited production most of them get eaten on the way back into the house or raw sliced into a salad.

Frozen baby peas are my go to.

I grew up with canned peas and cannot even look at a can without feeling queasy. Same for canned creamed corn. Staples of my childhood .

 

 

[Deryn]

Steaming briefly with mint leaves would be my preferred way to prepare fresh peas - not that I do that often these days. Frozen really are the way to go in my opinion - but occasionally I will be tempted at a farmer's market. I haven't had/done any fresh peas since I got my IP but I don't think I would try them in there - too delicate and the timing would be so critical that I would be afraid to mess it up.

[ElainaA]

I'm with @shain here - I grow English peas every year but very few make it into the house. When I was a child my mother used to get very annoyed when I ate so many peas in the garden. Now, no one scolds me.  I do grow snow peas to use in stir fries. 

[Tere]

13 hours ago, liuzhou said:

I really miss frozen peas. Haven't had any for about twenty years, but still have dreams about them!

 

The best are frozen in the fields where they are harvested, so are "fresher" than any fresh beans you are likely to encounter.

 

The little cans of French petits pois are great, too.

All I can get here are peas, canned or 'fresh', that are so old Chairman Mao went to school with their grandmother. You can boil them, pressure cook them, microwave them, beat them for weeks and they never soften. Horrible things.

 

Come back Mr Bird's Eye!

 

You have my sympathies. I remember similar from Japan. 

 

Sadly frozen pea care packages are never going to work

[AlaMoi]

oh dear.  garden peas are methinks even more better than garden tomatoes.

I do feets and feets of peas. 

I don't grown my own corn.  when corn is locally in season, it is very inexpensive - shuck, slice off the cob, freeze.  forget the blanch and extraordinary lengths nonsense.  freeze & eat.

 

but.... I always save a bag or two of peas for Christmas dinner.

[JoNorvelleWalker]

Dinner was peas and half a tiny chicken.  (OK, and a mashed potato.)  I normally cook chicken at 500 deg F.  But this was more like 650 deg F.  Which I only noticed when the smoke detectors went off.  Both of them.

 

No harm done.

 

However the peas, pressure steamed exactly two minutes on a bed of mint, were the best peas I've had that I can remember.  Unless I'm senile.  And they were pretty too.  The peas were sourced from Guatemala.  The chicken was raised locally, within a couple miles.  The bottle of Macon-Lugny was from France.

[JoNorvelleWalker]

Well, I got around to cooking up the rest of the Guatemalan peas, again steamed on a bed of mint -- still well within their sell by date:

 

 

 

Sadly the peas were now much starchier and not nearly as nice as the first time around.  Still, I must say they were better than most frozen peas I fix.

 

[Thanks for the Crepes]

I love the tiny frozen peas I am able to enjoy, but I'm very glad you enjoyed your fresh ones @JoNorvelleWalker.

 

When I grew my own, a whole lot of them never made it into the house for sharing. 

 

They're the only fresh ones I ever experienced. I love the tiny frozen peas offered shucked at 99 cents to $1.29 a pound from my local grocery store, Food Lion, and it is their brand.

 

I often serve them thawed and raw in salads. So good!