Low fat southern style black eye peas with ham, made in your crock pot! It’s really a bean rather than a pea, and an excellent source of calcium, folate, vitamin A and fiber. A perfect recipe for that leftover ham bone, but a ham steak would work great too. These have a mildly spicy flavor, you can adjust the heat to your taste. I served this over brown rice but this would also be great to eat as a soup.
I get a lot of requests for crock pot recipes, so I decided to experiment with dry beans in my slow cooker. I was prepared to call it a loss if they didn’t turn out good. Boy was I was pleasantly surprised! The beans cooked to perfection and this couldn’t be easier. I’m excited to make some of my other dry bean recipes in the crock pot now that I know how good they came out. Crock pot recipes tend to need more seasoning, I found seasoning the beans the last hour of cooking allowed for maximum flavor.
And since so many are asking, although I have and love my Instant Pot, I still love my slow cooker! I have the 6 Quart Hamilton Beach Set ‘n Forget Programmable Slow Cooker (affil link). I love it because you can adjust the time you want it to cook, and it automatically turns to warm when it’s done. It also has a probe for meat that automatically shuts off when done. I hated my old crock pot, it burnt everything and my food had a weird taste. This slow cooker is so great, I actually own several!
Slow Cooked Black Eyed Peas with Ham
Ingredients
- 8 oz smoked lean ham steak, diced (or a ham bone would be perfect)
- 1 pound dried black-eyed peas, rinsed and soaked overnight
- 2 bay leaves
- 1 tsp olive oil
- 1 medium onion, diced
- 2 cloves garlic, diced
- 1 red bell pepper, stemmed, seeded, and diced
- 1 jalapeno chile, seeded and minced
- 1 to mato, diced
- 1/2 tsp chili powder, I used chipotle
- 1-1/2 teaspoons cumin
- salt to taste
- 1 tsp ground black pepper
Instructions
- Soak peas overnight in 6 cups of water.
- The next morning, drain peas and add to slow cooker.
- Add 4 cups of water, bay leaves and ham.
- Cover and cook on high 6 hours or until the beans are tender.
- After 6 hours, in a large frying pan, add oil and sauté onion, garlic, bell pepper, jalapeño pepper, and tomato until soft, about 6 minutes.
- Add to the slow cooker and season black eyed peas generously with salt, cumin, chili powder and black pepper.
- Cover and cook on high 1 to 1 1/2 more hours.
- Discard bay leaves and serve.
