Green Pea Salad
Popular in the South with a mayonnaise based dressing, this version is made without mayo in a bright, fresh, lemony vinaigrette.
Legumes, of course, have been around for millennia, first domesticated and cultivated around 9,000 - 10,000 years ago in the area known as the Fertile Crescent (modern day Iraq) during the Neolithic agricultural revolution. They were dried and used as a staple food, and spread across Europe, India and China over centuries. By the classical Greek and Roman eras, they were widely consumed in their dried form until the 16th Century where the idea of eating fresh, tender green peas gained popularity, particularly in France and Italy at the onset of the Renaissance. They came to America, of course, from European settlers.
But it wasn't until the rise of the industrial revolution and advances in transportation that green peas became more widely available. The advent of canning in the 19th Century and flash freezing technology in the early 20th Century, led primarily by Clarence Birdseye, revolutionized a market for the legume. When mayonnaise became commercially available at about the same time in the 1920s, the Green Peas Salad began to appear in cookbooks of the day.
Green Pea Salad grew in popularity in the South during the 1950s during the rise of potluck suppers, neighborhood barbecues, church suppers and family reunions, and was a common salad to be served alongside potato salad and macaroni salad. When the 1960s saw the boom in the popularity of salad bars, Green Pea Salad was almost always standard fare.
However, in this version of an old standby, I decided I did not want yet another mayonnaise-based salad and so, created this version instead. It still contains the most fundamental ingredients of this multi-generational classic, namely cheddar cheese, bacon and red onion; and of course, green peas. Use only thawed, frozen green peas, never canned, and if available, buy those that have an “early harvest” or “young, sweet” notation for the best flavor and texture.
Green Pea Salad
Ingredients
- 3 cups frozen green peas, thawed
- 6 strips bacon, cooked until crispy, then crumbled
- 1/4 cup finely diced red onion
- 1/4 cup finely diced red bell pepper
- 1 cup fresh finely chopped parsley
- 1 cup cheddar cheese, cut into 1/2-inch cubes
- juice from 1/2 fresh lemon
- 4 tbsp white wine vinegar
- 1 tbsp lemon pepper (like, Mrs. Dash)
- 3-4 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
- 2 pinches of smoked salt (like, San Francisco Salt Company Alder Wood)
Instructions
- Place the thawed green peas, red onion, red bell pepper and parsley in a large mixing bowl and toss lightly.
- In a separate mixing bowl, combine the lemon juice, white wine vinegar, lemon pepper, smoked salt and olive oil and whisk to combine
- Add the crumbled bacon to the vinaigrette mixture. Stir a final time and the pour it all over the veggies. Toss well to coat.
- Add the cheese cubes and toss lightly a final time.
- Let the salad rest in the fridge for at least an hour. This will cause the parsley to wilt a little and all the flavors to amalgamate. Serve in chilled ramekins.
Notes
- Thaw the green peas by zapping a couple of minutes or so in the microwave. It's best to do this in 30 second increments, stir the peas and zap again.
- For a little extra citrus zing, zest the lemon into the mixture before extracting the juice.
- Preparation tip: the easiest way to prep the cheddar cheese is to buy the cheese snacking sticks, and then simply cut them perpendicularly into cubes.
