Pea porridge with soaking
Pea porridge made with soaked peas — simple, tasty, and good for you. It's an easy recipe that takes hardly any effort. You just have to soak the peas ahead of time, which means thinking about tomorrow's menu the night before. Peas soaked overnight swell up, and cooking them into porridge is no trouble at all. This is a basic version; feel free to dress it up however you like with meat, smoked sausage, sautéed vegetables, or even mushrooms.
Cooking method
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Step 1:
To make pea porridge, take dried yellow peas, water, and salt. The peas need to soak in cold water, and it's a good idea to change the water a couple of times while they soak. That'll spare you the gas and bloating later on. Soak them for at least 6 hours — overnight is the most convenient.
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Step 2:
In the morning, rinse the swollen peas well several times to wash away the starchy residue.
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Step 3:
Tip the peas into a sieve and rinse them there — it's easier that way.
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Step 4:
Transfer the soaked peas to a saucepan.
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Step 5:
Add clean water in a 1:2 ratio — you can use a bit less, since the peas have already soaked up plenty, or just leave the lid cracked open so the excess boils off toward the end of cooking.
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Step 6:
How long the soaked peas take depends on their variety and quality — usually 25–55 minutes. Salt to taste near the end of cooking. You can serve the porridge just like this, with the individual pea halves still visible in the texture.
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Step 7:
Or you can blend it smooth and serve the pea porridge as a purée.
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Step 8:
Stir butter or vegetable oil and some finely chopped fresh herbs into the pea porridge.
- Pea porridge with soaking is a simple recipe that goes way back. Peas were once one of the main staple foods in old Russia — long before the potato, which Tsar Peter the Great brought back to the country. There's even an old Russian saying, "That was back in the days of Tsar Pea!", used to mean something happened ages ago. Pea porridge is made either lean (for fasting days) or rich — with meat, cracklings, or stewed meat — and in the old days it was even baked into pies and pancakes. Peas pair beautifully with most foods. Pick the version you like best, and enjoy!
Caloric content of the products possible in the composition of the dish
- Butter 82% - 734 kcal/100g
- Amateur unsalted butter - 709 kcal/100g
- Unsalted peasant butter - 661 kcal/100g
- Peasant salted butter - 652 kcal/100g
- Melted butter - 869 kcal/100g
- Salt - 0 kcal/100g
- Water - 0 kcal/100g
- Yellow peas - 303 kcal/100g
