Description
A hearty and flavorful Hopping John Soup with black-eyed peas and ham.
Ingredients
Scale
- 1 small onion, chopped in fairly small pieces
- 1 cup celery, chopped in fairly small pieces
- 1 tablespoon olive oil
- 1 teaspoon minced garlic
- 3 cups diced ham (cut off the ham rind and save; you can get by with a bit less ham if needed)
- 8 cups homemade chicken stock
- 2 (16 oz.) packages frozen black-eyed peas
- 1/2 teaspoon dried thyme
- 1 bunch fresh collard greens, chopped
- 1 pinch red pepper flakes (optional)
- 1 tablespoon apple cider vinegar, or more to taste
- Optional: ham flavor base
Instructions
- In large frying pan, saute onion and celery in olive oil about 5 minutes, until starting to soften. Add garlic and cook about 2 minutes more.
- Then add ham and saute over very low heat 10 minutes. (Don’t skip this step, which concentrates the ham flavor into the vegetables.)
- Transfer mixture to large soup pot, add chicken stock, black-eyed peas, dried thyme, and ham rinds if available, and cook at very low simmer for one hour.
- After soup has cooked one hour, taste for flavoring. Add more water and ham flavor base if needed. (It will depend on your ham, but I usually add a tiny bit. I added about 2 cups more water to the soup at this point.)
- Add chopped collard greens, stir into soup and simmer one hour more, or until black-eyed peas are quite soft.
- When black-eyed peas are as soft as you want them, remove pieces of ham rind, then use an immersion blender, food processor, or hand masher to partially process about half the soup. You want a mixture of broken and unbroken black-eyed peas, with some thickening of the soup from the pureeing process. Be careful not to over process.
- Add red pepper flakes and vinegar and simmer 10 minutes more (or longer, I sometimes cook as much as an hour more at this point.)
- Serve Hopping John Soup hot.
Notes
- Homemade chicken stock can greatly enhance the flavor of this soup.
- Feel free to adjust the amount of ham and water based on your preference.
- Collard greens can be substituted with other greens if desired.
- Prep Time: 15 minutes
- Cook Time: 2 hours
- Category: Soup
- Method: Stovetop
- Cuisine: Southern
Nutrition
- Serving Size: 1 cup
- Calories: 270
- Sugar: 2g
- Sodium: 650mg
- Fat: 10g
- Saturated Fat: 3g
- Unsaturated Fat: 5g
- Trans Fat: 0g
- Carbohydrates: 30g
- Fiber: 8g
- Protein: 15g
- Cholesterol: 30mg