Instant Pot Black-Eyed Peas and Collard Greens

Instant Pot Black-Eyed Peas and Collard Greens. Pressure cooker beans and greens for luck in the New Year.

Every New Years Day, I have a surge of traffic as people look for recipes to bring good luck in the New Year. My two most popular are pressure cooker black-eyed peas and pressure cooker collard greens. And, every year on New Years, I also get the question: do you I have a recipe for black-eyed peas AND collard greens, cooked together?

Jump to:

• 🥫Ingredients
• 🥘Substitutions
• 🛠 Equipment
• 📏Scaling
• 🤨 Soaking Black-Eyed Peas?
• Sorting Peas
• 💡Tips and Tricks
• Instant Pot Black-Eyed Peas and Collard Greens
• ☃️ Storage
• 🤝 Related Posts
• 💬 Comments

Why yes, yes I do…now. (Ahem. Sorry this took so long.) I figure we need all the luck we can get this New Year, so eat your black-eyed peas and collard greens! (If you’re Polish, eat your pork and sauerkraut. If you’re Italian, eat your sausage and green lentils. If it brings luck in the New Year, it’s time to serve it. Please!)

Black-eyed peas and collards are a great combination. Black-eyed peas don’t need to soak, and they pressure cook for the same amount of time as the collard greens, making it simple to toss everything in the pot and cook it together. The only trick is wilting the collard greens - the raw leaves take up a lot of space in the pot, so I sauté them to get them to shrink enough to fit the beans. And, of course, I’m sautéing the collards in bacon fat - pork, beans, and collards just go together.

Looking for good luck in the New Year? (Aren’t we all?) Try these peas and greens - you won’t be disappointed.

🥫Ingredients

• Dried black-eyed peas
• Bacon
• Collard greens
• Fine sea salt
• Fresh ground black pepper

See recipe card for quantities.

🥘Substitutions

Black-eyed peas and Black-eyed beans are the same thing - a subspecies of cow beans. You can substitute 3 (15-ounce) cans of cooked black-eyed peas, drained, if you’re desperate - but the cooking time stays the same (the collard greens need it), and canned beans will overcook and be a bit soft.

Want to use a ham hock instead of bacon? Instead of browning the bacon in step 1, heat a tablespoon of vegetable oil until shimmering. Continue the recipe with wilting the collards step. Add the ham hock with the black-eyed peas and water. After cooking, remove the ham hock, shred it, discard any fat, skin, or bones, and stir the shredded ham back into the pot.

Want a vegetarian version? Instead of bacon, heat 1 tablespoon of vegetable oil until shimmering, then add 1 chopped onion and 1 clove of garlic, and sauté until softened. Continue the recipe at the wilting the collards step.

🛠 Equipment

A 6-quart pressure cooker. Pressure cooker dried beans are one of the reasons I became a pressure cooker convert. Try them - you'll never go back to canned beans. (OK, maybe you will, for convenience - but see the Storage section for tips on make ahead freezer beans.)

📏Scaling

This recipe scales down easily - cut everything in half if you don't need as many beans, or have a 3-quart pressure cooker. Scaling up runs into space issues; if you have an 8-quart pressure cooker, you can double this recipe, but it's too much to fit in a 6-quart pressure cooker.

🤨 Soaking Black-Eyed Peas?

I get the "to soak or not to soak?" question all the the time. I don't soak black-eyed peas. They cook in 15 minutes under pressure - soaking them seems like a waste of time when they cook so quickly.

Sorting Peas

Black-eyed peas are an agricultural product, and like other beans, stuff tends to creep in when they are processed. Dried beans should always be sorted and rinsed before using, to get rid of any twigs, stones, clumps of dirt, or broken beans.

To sort the black-eyed peas, I pour them out on one side of a rimmed baking sheet (a half-sheet pan), to keep the peas from escaping. Then I slowly run my fingers through the pile of peas, pulling them towards me on the sheet. I watch the peas as they move, looking for anything that doesn't seem right. If I see something, I poke around in the peas until I find what caught my eye, and discard it. I repeat this a couple of times, until I'm satisfied everything is out of the peas.

Then I dump the peas into a fine mesh strainer and rinse them under cold running water, to wash off any dirt or dust.

Now the black-eyed peas are sorted, rinsed, and ready for soaking or cooking.

💡Tips and Tricks

• Salt your bean water! "Salt toughens beans" is a myth. Salting before cooking helps season the beans all the way through as they cook.
• If your beans are still tough when the cooking time is over, especially any "floaters" at the top of the pot, give the beans a stir, lock the lid, and pressure cook for another five minutes. Older beans take longer to cook, and if the beans have been sitting in the shelf at your store for a while, they may need extra time.
• Shred the meat on the ham hock? The ham hock adds smoky pork flavor to the beans. Once the beans are cooked, the hock has done its job. Most hocks don't have enough meat to be worth shredding and should be thrown away after cooking. If you can see a lot of meat on the hock, and you don't mind the extra work, separate it from the skin, fat, gristle, and bone. Shred the meat that remains and stir it into the beans.
• Simmer to thicken: If you have the time, and want thicker pea broth, simmer the peas for 15 minutes after pressure cooking. Set the Instant Pot to Sauté mode adjusted to low, with a 15 minute cooking time, and leave the lid off to let the broth evaporate. I keep a loose eye on the pot, stirring every so often to keep the peas from sticking to the bottom of the pot.

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☃️ Storage

A 2-cup container of cooked black-eyed peas, with cooking liquid, replaces a 15-ounce can of beans from the grocery store. They’ll last in the refrigerator for a few days, and freeze for up to 6 months. I always make extra beans, and freeze the leftovers for use in other recipes. Freezer beans are ready to use with about 5 minutes in the microwave, and are so much better than canned.

🤝 Related Posts

Pressure Cooker Black-Eyed Peas
Pressure Cooker Collard Greens with Bacon
Pressure Cooker Pork Steaks, St. Louis BBQ Style
Instant Pot Turnip Greens with Ham
Instant Pot Field Peas and Snaps
My other Instant Pot and Pressure Cooker Recipes

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