Ingredients

• 1 pound dried black-eyed peas, soaked overnight, drained and rinsed
• 3 cups chopped* turnip greens (thoroughly rinse the greens, you’ll be amazed at how much dirt can get trapped in the leaves)(the original recipe doesn’t say to, but we removed the stems** before chopping up the greens)
• 1 (10-oz.) can diced tomatoes and green chiles (we used Rotel original)
• 1 cup chopped onion
• ½ cup chopped green bell pepper
• ½ cup chopped celery
• 3 cloves garlic, minced
• 2 (32-oz.) cartons vegetable stock (this time we had to use unsalted vegetable stock)
• 1 smoked turkey leg (we used all 3 that were in the package since 2 of them were so much smaller, it was about 1 ½ pounds total)
• 2 cups instant rice
• 2 tsp. salt
• 2 tsp. hot sauce (we used Frank’s Redhot Original)

Directions

1. Using a 4- to 6-qt. slow cooker, add all the following ingredients to it, mixing them together: black-eyed peas, turnip greens, diced tomatoes and green chiles, onion, bell pepper, celery and garlic. Afterwards, stir in the vegetable stock. Original directions said to submerge the turkey in the mixture but we just put the turkey legs on top of everything else in the slow cooker. Put a lid on the slow cooker and let the dish cook on HIGH for 5 to 6 hours or until the black-eyed peas are tender.
2. Now take the lid off the slow cooker long enough to stir in the rice and put the lid back on afterwards. Cook the rice for 20 to 30 minutes (we went with 30 minutes) or until the rice is tender Stir in the salt and hot sauce and this dish is ready to be served.

*While the black-eyed peas are supposed to represent coins, the greens are supposed to represent paper money which is why we tried to cut them so they’d look like dollar bills.

**You can remove the stems from the greens by folding the leaves together and pulling the stem out by hand or cutting the stem off with a knife. Both get the job done but the hand method does result in leaves that don’t look quite as nice as those done with the knife method.

The following 5 pictures show what turnip greens look like and the two different ways you could remove the stems:

This recipe is supposed to make 10-12 servings.

The last time we made this, the dish was salty but because of using unsalted stock this time, the two teaspoons of salt worked perfectly. You get some smokiness in the dish thanks to the smoked turkey legs but it doesn’t overwhelm the dish. The hot sauce adds a little bit of vinegar to the dish which contrasts with the savoriness but doesn’t bring a ton of heat. Because mommy likes a little more heat in her food, she added some more hot sauce to her own portion. The rice feels kind of soft but that could be due to us getting distracted and not hearing the timer go off. We have no clue how long past the initial 30 minute cook time it had been cooking before we got back into the kitchen. We did like the firm but cooked texture of the black-eyed peas against the soft rice. As far as the other components, you don’t taste any ingredients individually but you know they came together to produce a tasty dish !

We got this recipe from a Paula Deen book or magazine.

We weren’t paid in any form to mention Rotel, Frank’s RedHot, or Paula Deen.

Take care everybody !