Pea Porridge

Name: Pea Porridge with Smoked Sausage: Split Pea Mash Recipe
Prep time: 8 h
Cook time: 2 h
Total time: 10 h
Cuisine: European
Ingredients: Dried split peas (yellow or green) 1 cup (180 g); Water for soaking and cooking (10–15 mm above the peas); Homemade smoked sausage 100 g; Lard, or a small piece of pork fatback 0.5 tsp; Rosemary 1 small sprig; Salt, coarsely ground black pepper to taste

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10 h

Made from well-cooked split peas, pea porridge, or pea mash, can be a dish on its own or a side for meat, fish or chicken.

Plain pea porridge with nothing added is often a must at certain ceremonial meals and during religious fasts, and I remember that from my childhood. Most often the porridge is made from peas alone, simply put, a “bare” one. But seasoned with butter, fried onion or pork cracklings, it gets even tastier.

It is commonly thought that porridge means grain cooked in water or milk, and any grain will do: buckwheat, semolina, pearl barley and so on. Famous oatmeal, the oat porridge, is one of the most respected and healthy porridges for a proper breakfast.

Pea porridge is a fairly high-calorie dish with a lot of protein. It is worth saying that pea protein is close to meat protein. Pea porridge is in great demand with a certain part of the population. I was interested to learn that peas cooked into a porridge are part of the national dish of the Turks and Caicos Islands, “peas and grits”, which is made with shellfish, fish and vegetables.

The most familiar are hulled yellow peas, whole or in halves (split). They make an excellent pea soup, especially with smoked pork ribs.

Everyone knows the pea plant. I remember how, in my early childhood, when I was still a little “bandit”, the main summer fun in the village was a shooting contest with peas blown through a tube. And I was good at it! In early summer, before the pea fields were ploughed under to fertilize the soil, we shelled and ate green peas. There were plenty of them, and if you caught the moment, they were sweet. Later the peas ripened and tasted pretty nasty. Still, a vegetable soup or a cream soup made with green peas was always superb.

Pea porridge can be made from any hulled dried peas, yellow or green. It is not a difficult dish, and you can cook it with fried vegetables, meat, pork cracklings or mushrooms. Such porridge hardly needs any spices besides salt and black pepper.

Ingredients

2 servings

Dried split peas (yellow or green) 1 cup (180 g)
Water for soaking and cooking (10–15 mm above the peas)
Homemade smoked sausage 100 g
Lard, or a small piece of pork fatback 0.5 tsp
Rosemary 1 small sprig
Salt, coarsely ground black pepper to taste

Step-by-step recipe

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Soaking the peas

Pea porridge recipes vary a lot, and the methods are often very different. In any case, cooking dried peas is not that easy: they cook very poorly. So they need to be soaked in cold water beforehand for quite a long time.

Cover the dried peas with cold water and leave them overnight, for 6-8 hours, which is usually enough. Use plenty of water: the peas swell. After soaking, rinse the peas and look them over, as you can come across some rather interesting artifacts.

Cooking the peas

It does not really matter which color of dried peas you choose; yellow or green split peas both work great. Porridge cooked in water is salted only once the peas are done, and spices are also best added at the very end.

Put the soaked and rinsed peas into a pot and cover with water, so that it sits 10-15 mm above the peas. Add a small sprig of rosemary to the water: it gives the pea porridge a very pleasant, barely noticeable flavor and aroma.
Put the pot on the heat and bring the water to a boil. If a lot of foam appears, you can skim it off. Let it boil for 2-3 mins and throw out the rosemary sprig. Be sure to stir the peas, as they tend to stick to the bottom of the pot.
Cover the pot with a lid, turn the heat down to the minimum and cook on the lowest heat you can get for 1 hour or more, until the peas break down completely. The cooking time of peas is a thing in itself, and it can take quite a while. Stir from time to time. Cook the peas until the water has boiled away. Do not turn up the heat: if the peas are done but water is left, better to take off the lid and let it evaporate at the same temperature. If the water has boiled away but the peas are still hard, add only boiling water.
Mash the cooked peas into a porridge-like consistency. I remember my grandmother mashing cooked peas with a wooden pestle. Nowadays it is easier to use a blender, which gives a perfect, smooth mash.
Put the pea mash back into the pot and set it over low heat.

Sausage

Peel the casing off the homemade smoked sausage and cut it into cubes, twice as large as the vegetables are cut for vinaigrette salad.
Melt 0.5 tsp of lard in a frying pan, or render the fat from a small piece of pork fatback, sliced thinly first. You need very little fat. Fry the diced sausage over medium heat until it has a golden, slightly crispy crust, 3-4 mins.
Mix the pea mash with the fried sausage.
Season to taste with salt and coarsely ground black pepper and stir.
Cover the pot with a lid and let the porridge simmer on the lowest heat for 5-6 mins. Pea mash readily sticks to the bottom of the pot and can burn, so keep an eye on it and stir with a spoon from time to time.

Serving

While the pea porridge with sausage is still hot, spoon it into bowls and serve right away.
Pea porridge with sausage is a tasty, very filling dish on its own. I think it also makes an excellent side for a fried pork chop.

Calories and macros

550 kcal

Serving ≈ 250 g

Protein32 g26% of kcal
Fat23 g44% of kcal
Carbs36 g30% of kcal

100 g221 kcalProtein 12.7 gFat 9.3 gCarbs 14.4 g

Calculated from the recipe ingredients, excluding salt and spices. Data: USDA and Matvaretabellen.

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