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 reduces the cooking time.

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.

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