slow cooker black-eyed pea and cabbage soup
A great, easy way to ring in the new year! Serving black-eyed peas and cabbage on New Year's Day is a Southern tradition to ensure luck and wealth for the coming year. This has a Southwestern kick for good measure. Pair this with a pan of real Southern cornbread for a delicious dose of New Year's luck.
Blue Ribbon Recipe
Not only will this black-eyed pea soup help use up a leftover hambone, according to Southern tradition it will bring you luck in the New Year too. It's such a good recipe, you'll want to make it all year round. What we love most is that it's full of fresh veggies that add all the yummy flavor. It's a very easy Crock Pot recipe too. Just dump in all the ingredients and leave it alone. What you come back to is a delicious soup. Make sure to serve with some cornbread. Yum!
Ingredients For slow cooker black-eyed pea and cabbage soup
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2 pkgfresh black-eye peas, 12-oz each (or 1 pound dried black eye peas, soaked and prepared for cooking)
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1hambone
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3-4 cham, cubed (can be leftover ham if there's not enough on the hambone)
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1 lgyellow sweet onion, chopped
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2 stalkcelery, chopped
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2-3 dashLouisiana hot sauce
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1 Tbspminced garlic
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2bay leaves
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6 cchicken broth
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1 TbspBetter than Bouillon ham flavor (optional)
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1 canRotel tomatoes and chilies, undrained (mild, original or hot will all do, pick your personal preference for heat.)
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1green bell pepper, diced
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1/2head of green cabbage (if the cabbage is large) or 1 small green cabbage, chopped
How To Make slow cooker black-eyed pea and cabbage soup
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1Prep all ingredients. Carve as much meat as you can off the hambone, then cube the meat. Then, starting with the hambone, put all ingredients into Crock Pot except the cabbage. Pour the broth over last. This soup has a lot of volume starting out, but it will cook down considerably. Note: If you can't get fresh black eye peas, you may use a pound of dried black-eyed peas. To substitute dried black-eyed peas, rinse the peas the night before, sorting out any dirt or stones. Put into a pot, cover with water, and boil for ten minutes. Remove from heat and allow to soak overnight. When ready to prepare, rinse the peas before adding them to the Crock Pot. Canned black-eyed peas are NOT recommended, as they grow pasty and mushy and ruin the texture of the soup.
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2Add chopped cabbage to the top of the mixture.
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3Cook on high for 6 hours.
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4Give the soup a stir to make sure the cabbage is cooking down about 3 hours into the cooking process.
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5Remove ham bone and bay leaves from Crock Pot. Scrape off meat and marrow and stir both into the soup. Discard hambone. Add salt, pepper and a few dashes of Louisiana Hot Sauce to taste.
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6We pair this with my grandmother's recipe for Southern cornbread with stone-ground cornmeal. Forget about crackers -- just crumble some cornbread into your soup to soak up the good juice for a meal that'll make a great start to your New Year!
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7This is great the next day, too. Peas soften still more overnight. Note: I've been told Ro-Tel is not available in every area of the country. It is available for purchase through Amazon, but if you don't want to go that far, here's a way to make your own homemade Ro-Tel: 1 15 oz can fire roasted tomatoes, 1 4 oz can diced green chilies, 2 tsp. lime juice. Optional: 1 tbsp fresh chopped cilantro. Regular green chilies are no hotter than a bell pepper, but if you want to ramp up the heat, you can find chopped, canned Hatch peppers or other, hotter peppers to use. Note Two: If you don't have a leftover hambone from your holiday ham, one alternative is to get a hambone from Honeybaked Ham, if one is in your area. I've found their 'soup starter' bones have enough ham left both for this soup and for an additional meal - I often make an omelet or a quiche. Honeybaked sells their hambones dirt cheap after Christmas and Easter, so it's a great time to stock up, too. You will likely want to rinse off the sweeter outer coating, however. *I'm not employed by Honeybaked and I have no stake in the company -- we have a small family and it's the cheapest and easiest way I've found to get a hambone without having to buy a whole ham to get it.
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