Collards and Black Eyed Pea Soup In The Slow Cooker

I mentioned in a previous post that I was going to give an old recipe a BeingAVeganAthlete spin. I did and it was great! The slow cooker made the work easy and the soup that much heartier. Apparently, this is some sort of traditional recipe from the southern United States. Whatever... I've bastardized it enough to allow it to become a traditional recipe of southern Ontario.

Ingredients:

• 2 small or 1 large onion, diced
• 3 sticks of celery, diced
• 1 large red bell pepper, diced
• 5-6 cloves of garlic, very thinly sliced (this is conservative - go 6-10 if you really love food)
• 1 450g bag of dried black eyed peas
• 6 cups of water
• 6 TBSP of vegetable broth powder
• 1 bunch of collard greens, chopped with the stems removed
• 1 TSP each of thyme, cayenne pepper, paprika, black pepper, basil
• 1 16 ounce can of diced or crushed tomatoes
• 1 small tin of tomato paste
• 4 TBSP of extra virgin olive oil

Saute all the veggies (onion, red bell pepper, garlic, celery) in oil until onion is tender, opaque and yellow.

Pour the water into your slow cooker. Add the vegetable broth powder and stir in until dissolved. Put the slow cooker on high and add in black eyed peas, seasoning, tomatoes and tomato paste. Mix everything well and wait for the frying to be complete.

Add the fried mix to the slow cooker and mix in well. Put the collard greens on top and cover the slow cooker. When the greens have softened up, mix well into the soup.

The completion of the soup hinges on the black eyed peas becoming tender enough to be enjoyable to eat. Leave on high for 5-6 hours. You can probably get away with consuming some of the soup at this point but you're better off reducing the heat to low and letting cook overnight.

This soup is hearty enough for biggest meat-eating savage to believe that it's healthy. Healthy it is. This soup is packed with protein, most of your essential vitamins and is basically an anti-oxidant bomb.

Enjoy and Happy New Year to all! Remember to make sure your beer and wine are from a vegan-friendly source then drink to your heart's content.

My Associated Content version of the recipe can be viewed here.