Eat your vegetables! Sweet peas are one of the first vegetables to ripen in a summer garden and the flavor of fresh boiled sweet peas can’t be beat. Here’s a recipe for a Sweet Pea Salad that is just as tasty all year around when made with either fresh, frozen or canned sweet peas. It’s a great way to serve a vegetable at meals, buffet or picnic.

My family had a huge vegetable garden when I was growing up. One of the first vegetables to ripen was sweet peas. I remember quite well that one of our chores was to pick and shell the hulls of the sweet peas. All the family and often neighborhood children would join in for shelling sweet peas on the back stoop (porch). It was a social affair. Usually extra sweet peas were blanched and frozen for storing in the deep freezer for use all year around.

The flavor of fresh sweet peas from the garden can’t be beat. Nothing compares. Either boiled and served with butter or creamed with real cream was how sweet peas were served. A little high in cholesterol, but who knew about the damages of cholesterol in those days? I rarely, if ever, see un-hulled sweet peas in a grocery store or produce market. I rarely see sweet peas grown in gardens here. We’re left with frozen peas which are actually close in comparison to fresh ones.

Recipe

This recipe for Sweet Pea Salad tastes just as good with either canned or frozen peas. Actually it is traditionally made with canned peas. I’ll bring this dish to covered dish suppers or picnics for a chilled vegetable salad. Over the past several weeks, I’ve tried many variations of Sweet Pea recipes. I like this combination of ingredients the best. This one is simple and easy to make. 

For peas, I use either Le Sueur brand canned peas or any brand of frozen peas. Sweet peas and other canned vegetables come in different grades related to uniformity of size and the number of stems and other extraneous fragments. Le Sueur peas, on the left, always have high quality.Other ingredients include a hard boiled egg, sharp cheddar cheese, celery and red onion (or green onions). The celery adds crunch, red onion adds a little zip. The hard boiled egg is an important component; don’t omit it. Only a little of each ingredient is needed, otherwise you overpower the flavor of the peas.

For a salad dressing, I use mayonnaise and dilute it with just of little of the canned pea liquid or water. Some recipes add sour cream, I prefer the dressing with only mayonnaise. For flavor I add either a tablespoon of dry Hidden Valley Ranch mix or garlic salt and thyme. Both work will, again just a little seasoning is needed.

This salad is best chilled, the flavors seem to blend together this way. It’s a great way to serve peas as a salad.