Indian black eyed peas recipe

Easy and delicious Indian black-eyed peas recipe with just a few ingredients like onions, tomatoes, spices is all you need for a busy day.

If you have some tomato curry sauce handy in your freezer, you can even make this as dump and go recipe.

Black-eyed peas, also called lobia or cowpeas, are medium-sized beans that cook quickly compared to other beans.

In the Southern United States, there is a tradition of eating black-eyed peas on a New year's day.

You can cook these black-eyed peas without soaking. Still, soaking black-eyed peas makes them easy for digestion and reduces the cooking time.

If you feel bloated after having any beans, then you should soak them and add a teaspoon of salt or apple cider vinegar, or baking soda while soaking them. Then, discard the soaking water and thoroughly wash them twice before cooking.

Step by step recipe instructions using Instant pot:

• Soak the dried black-eyed peas for at least 6 hours. You can soak them overnight as well. 
• Start the Instant pot in saute mode and add oil to it.

• Once it is hot enough, add bay leaf, cloves, cardamom, chopped ginger.

• Now add finely chopped onions and cook them till they turn translucent. It will take around 3 to 4 minutes.

• To these fried onions, add finely chopped tomatoes. You can use canned tomatoes or tomato paste as well. If you are in a hurry, you can finely puree the fresh tomatoes instead of chopping them.

• Cook the tomatoes for around 5 minutes and add the spice powders - cumin powder, turmeric powder, coriander powder, red chili powder, garam masala powder, and salt. Mix this well.

• Drain the water from soaked black-eyed peas and wash them in clean water a couple of times. Then, drain the water completely and add these washed peas to the instant pot.

• Mix it well so that the tomato mixture is coated well with these black-eyed peas.

• Add water to the Instant pot and deglaze the pan to avoid a burn signal.

• Cancel the saute mode and close the Instant pot with its lid. Next, seal the vent and select manual or pressure cook mode, and cook it for 8 minutes on HIGH pressure.

• Once the Instant pot finishes cooking, wait for 10 minutes and do a pressure release carefully. If you have time, you can wait for a natural pressure release.

• Now start the Instant pot again in saute mode, add chopped spinach leaves, and cook for 3 to 4 minutes. If you are using baby spinach leaves, you can skip cooking again and close the lid for 5 minutes or so. 

• Indian black-eyed peas curry (lobia masala) is ready to serve!

Pressure cooker instructions:

Don't have Instant pot? You can make this black-eyed pea curry using a stovetop pressure cooker as well. All the steps remain the same except the cooking time.

For a regular pressure cooker, cook it on a medium flame for about 3 to 4 whistles, and perfectly cooked curried black-eyed peas will be ready.

Serving suggestions:

• Serve this curry as a side for rice or any Indian flatbread like roti, naan, millet bhakri. 
• This curry will be a good side dish for dosa (Indian fermented flatbread).
• To make this a meal for a busy day, add a cup of potatoes, and you can have this as a soup or stew.

Recipe Notes and variations:

• I used red black-eyed peas in this recipe, but you can use white or red black-eyed peas to make this delicious curry.
• Don't have spinach? You can use green leafy veggies like amaranth greens, fenugreek leaves, kale, collard greens, moringa leaves. 
• If using fenugreek leaves, use ½ cup as they will be bitter in taste.
• As pressure cook time for this recipe is 8 minutes, I’m not adding veggies to avoid overcooked veggies. 
• Do you want to use canned black-eyed peas to make this curry? In this case, you need not pressure cook it, and simmering everything for 5 to 10 minutes will be good. Or, if you want hands-free cooking, you can pressure cook for 1 minute.
• If you use pre-cooked black-eyed peas to make this recipe, you can add veggies of your choice like carrot, beans, mushroom, cauliflower, broccoli. 
• Want to make a dump-and-go recipe? You can use my tomato curry sauce and make it in no time. Add 1 cup of tomato curry sauce, soaked blackeyed peas, water, red chili powder, salt to the Instant pot, and cook it for 8 minutes on high pressure.
• And instead of tomato curry sauce, you can use the marinara sauce to make this cowpeas curry. It will be a different flavor but very tasty.
• To make this curry less spicy, you can reduce the chili powder.

Recommended products:

I personally use this manual chopper to quickly chop onions and tomatoes.

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