Black Eyed Pea Soup with Brown Rice, Corn and Peppers

The title of this soup doesn't do it justice but if writing this post means that I will delay any longer then this title will stick for now. I haven't posted here in (I hate to admit this) almost 4 months. But you can always check out my other blog where I post more frequently (or less infrequently).


I made this soup on New Year's Eve as a way to bring good luck in the new year. I usually make Jumpin' John (the vegetarian version of Hoppin' John) but decided to do something new this year as we were having a soup and salad dinner for New Year's Eve with a friend. I made Mushroom Barley Soup and this one. They were both quite delicious, and the mushroom soup provides incredible immune-boosting properties but this year I will go for good luck.

I hope that you like this soup. I make it in the pressure cooker, of course, but it can be made stove top. You can substitute other grains such as wild rice (cook longer) or barley for the brown rice if you like. This pretty soup is filling and gluten-free. Add more herbs and spices, to season it the way that you like it.







Black Eyed Pea Soup with Brown Rice, Corn and Roasted Peppers
This soup is easy for to make any time since almost all the ingredients, except greens, are pantry or freezer staples.
Serves 4-6
20 minutes at pressure, quick release, 2 minutes at pressure, natural release

1-2 teaspoons olive or other oil (optional)
1 medium onion, diced
1 tablespoon cumin seeds
1 teaspoon ground cardamom or coriander
2 cloves garlic, minced
1/2 teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes, or more to taste
1 cup brown rice
4 cups homemade vegetable stock
1 cup black eyed peas, soaked overnight or quick soaked
1 cup frozen corn, not thawed
½ diced roasted red pepper
½ cup chopped nettles or other greens such as kale or collards
1 teaspoon salt
More crushed red pepper, to taste
Chopped cilantro, if you have it

Heat the oil in the pressure cooker over medium heat. Add the onion and sauté for 1 to 2 minutes. Add the spices and garlic, and stir to combine. Add the rice and stir that to coat with oil and spices. Add the stock and lock the lid on the pressure cooker. Bring to high pressure. Lower heat to maintain high pressure for 20 minutes.
Quick release the pressure and add the remaining ingredients, up to the salt. Bring back to high pressure for 2 more minutes. Remove the pot from the stove and let the pressure come down naturally. Stir in the salt, crushed red pepper and cilantro.

Note: If you have leftover soup, it will likely get very thick and you might need to thin it with more stock. If that happens when cooking, add stock until soup is desired thickness. I really like thick and chunky soup.

Pressure Cooking Steel Cut Oats

Over at Pinch My Salt people are going ga ga over steel cut oats. And they have to cook them for at least 25 minutes.

I, too, like steel cut oats and in fact Alex of the Facebook group Lorna Sass is my homegirl reviewed my DVD and saw that I have a recipe for a cooked cereal. He asked about cooking steel cut oats. And the recipe for that is the same as any chunky grain cereal.

Take 3 cups of liquid -- I like to use 2 cups water and 1 cup nondairy milk. I add a cinnamon stick or two, the oats or other grain, and a pinch of salt. I lock the lid on my pressure cooker and bring to high pressure over high heat. I set my timer for 3 minutes. When the cooker gets to high heat, turn the heat down and get your timer going.

After 3 minutes, move the pot off the hot burner and let the pressure come down naturally. Open the lid carefully, and add what you like. I like to take out the cinnamon sticks, and add ground flax, raisins, chopped up apple, toasted walnuts or sunflower seeds, and a bit of agave or maple syrup for sweetener. It's a filling meal.

Remember that whole grains (or even steel cut ones) are good for you. If you don't want to make your own and dole it out for daily dishes which is a great idea, you can go to Jamba Juice where they are now selling organic steel cut oats. Unfortunately for me, they cook them in milk but at least they have them. Read more here.

If you like this post you can sign up to get information from me monthly through my newsletter by going to my pressure cooking website.

Getting People Excited About Pressure Cooking

I am just returning from a half-day workshop that I presented to the employees of the San Diego Red Cross WIC (Women, Infant's and Children) office. There's nothing like packing one's pressure cooker in their suitcase, as I did but it worked out just fine. Cooking while on the road, without a kitchen, isn't my favorite thing to do but I can certainly handle it.

I made red and white quinoa, and along with it I made a tempeh dish with dried mushrooms, red and orange peppers, finished with pea shoot sprouts. It was mixed with Drew's shiitake ginger dressing, as a way to get around buying entire bottles of tamari and olive oil. I didn't taste it but it smelled heavenly to me.

Since today was the Great American Meat-Out, I got to showcase vegetarian foods, along with the microgreens and edible flower products from Fresh Origins. I tell you that you haven't lived until you've tried baby orchids which taste something like cucumbers. The Buzz buttons (or at least that's what I think that they were called, were quite interesting for people since they make your tongue tingle.) Tofurky donated the 5 Grain tempeh which was excellent. I don't get it at my store so I was especially happy to serve it.

The topic of my talk was Mindful Eating to Boost Your Energy and Soothe Your Soul. I think that I presented enough ways for people to become more mindful of their eating, along with ways for them to carry it out such as batch cooking, and using the freezer as your pantry. This is one of my favorite ways to make my cooking life easy.

Using the pressure cooker also makes it fast. So no need to buy frozen brown rice when you can make your own.

My biggest hope with the group was that I could help dispel the myths that pressure cookers are dangerous and can blow up, while introducing the group of almost 100 to foods that they'd never tried. I am sure that I did that. The pressure cooking went on without a hitch and my cooker is once again packed in my suitcase, awaiting its return trip to Santa Rosa. (Think 38 pound suitcase, ugh.) I still think that home-cooking is best so give it a try without taking it on the road.

Pressure Cooker Brown Rice Recipe

I don't need to write much about a recipe for pressure cooking brown rice because all it takes is rice, water and salt, and the salt is optional. So, I'll tell you a bit about using the modern pressure cooker while I am here.

1 cup brown rice, 1 1/2 cups water or stock

This kind of pressure cooker doesn't have a jiggler. It has a little button that pops up to let you know that the pot is at pressure. You can watch the button in action by clicking on the video on my website.

In my DVD Pressure Cooking: A Fresh Look, Delicious Dishes in Minutes, I cook red rice with lentils. I use a long grain red rice from Thailand which keeps turning out different with varying amounts of water and rice. So far, 1 cup of rice to 2 cups of water, cooked for 9 to 10 minutes with a natural pressure release seems to work fine, most of the time.

Here's the rub with cooking grains -- how they cook depends upon that batch of grains, how old it is, how it's been stored which effects the moisture level, and other intangible factors. So, following the recipe will work most of the time. You need a jumping off point so this might help.

Another tip: when cooking more than 1 cup of rice, reduce the amount of liquid by 1/4 cup for each additional cup of grain. Here's how this translates into cooking: for the 1st cup of brown rice you use 1 1/2 cups water and for the second cup you use 1 1/4 cups water. Two cups of brown rice requires 2 3/4 cups water in the pressure cooker. This works well for stove top cooking, too.

I do this because I do not care for soggy grains. Do you?