how to preserve peas Archives - Urban Homesteading

I’m often asked why I choose to can certain foods when they could just as easily be frozen. My answer might vary from food to food, but the answer is usually that freezer space is limited and we simply have too much. At the moment, we’ve got our fridge freezer, a small chest freezer here, a small chest freezer at my mom’s house, and a medium chest freezer at my mom’s house. By the end of the harvest season, these are crammed full and there’s no room for additional stuff. We should be getting another chest freezer this year, but I think that will only ease the freezer space pressure a little bit but not solve it.

For some foods, canning creates new flavours or products, so that’s the primary reason. The clear answers here are tomatoes — from which I can pasta sauce, curry sauce, juice, soup, and more —and things like beets and hot peppers, which I pickle.

And for some foods, like peas, I just enjoy it canned rather than frozen. I prefer the soft texture you get from canned peas and don’t care much for the harder and drier texture of frozen peas (even boiling frozen peas doesn’t solve that issue for me).

Not all peas are made for canning. We grow two types of peas — the first are snap peas which are good for snacking on as-is, but they’re not suitable for canning. If we have an excess of snap peas, I will shell them and freeze the peas. The second types of peas are Alaskan peas — these ones hold up well to canning.

Since peas are a low-acid food, they can only be pressure-canned. It is unsafe to can them using a regular boiling water canner or other canning method. If you’re newer to canning or coming back to it after a long time away, check out my Canning 101 post to help get a handle on terminology and best practices for safety.

How to pressure can peas

I’ve had a lot of folks say “Oh, you’ve got a pressure canner? That must speed things up!” While a pressure cooker can speed up the cooking process, pressure canning slows down the canning process. A lot of time is spent pressurizing the canner and then depressurizing it, and the processing times tend to be longer than water bath canning.

So the first thing you’ll need is time. I rarely do pressure canning on a busy weeknight; rather, I tend to save them for Saturday afternoons.

There are two methods to canning peas — raw pack and hot pack. I prefer the raw pack method because it’s easy; you just pack your peas in the jars, top them with boiling water, and can them. Hot packing requires boiling the peas first, then packing them in jars with hot water. This post is for the raw pack method.

Pressure canning peas is an easy project and great for someone newer to canning. Let’s dive into the steps:

Step one: Prepare the peas

The first step is to shell the peas. It’s generally a good idea to give them a good rinse before shelling them, so any dirt, debris, and contaminants on the outside of the pod get washed away before you shell them and end up getting that dirt in the shelled peas.

There are different ways to shell peas and there are little devices to help you with the process. I tend to rip one end of the pod and then crack it open.

Give yourself a lot of time for shelling peas because it’s not a quick process. What I’ll typically do is if I’m planning to can on Saturday, then starting on Thursday evening I’ll shell peas. Once shelled, they store well in the fridge for a couple days before canning.

Once all your peas have been shelled, give them another rinse to wash away any dirt or contaminants that might be in there.

Step two: Load up your jars

Using quart or smaller size jars — I use half-pint / one-cup jars — fill them with peas, leaving a one inch headspace.

Add an optional pinch of salt to each jar. It’s best to use canning salt, if you have it. Sea salt works just as well.

Top with boiling water, maintaining the one inch headspace.

Debubble the peas to ensure no air pockets are trapped, and adjust headspace with more water if needed. Wipe the jar rims with a paper towel wetted with white vinegar, then attach two-part lids to fingertip tightness.

Step three: Pressure canning peas

Load the jars into your pressure canner and proceed as per your canner’s instructions. For me, before the jars go in, I have to fill water to a certain line, then load the jars in, close the lid with the vent open, and bring to a boil. I let it boil for about ten minutes, then add the weighted gauge, the vent closes on its own, and I let the pressure build to where I want it.

At my elevation, the pressure required using a weighted gauge is 10 pounds. For 1,001 feet and up, use a 15 pound weighted gauge. For a dial gauge, it’s 11 pounds up to 2,000 feet, 12 pounds for up to 4,000 feet, 12 pounds for up to 6,000 feet, 14 pounds for up to 8,000 feet, and 15 pounds for up to 10,000 feet.

The processing time, regardless of the elevation, gauge type, and jar size is 40 minutes.

Once 40 minutes at the appropriate pressure have passed, turn off the stove and again proceed as per canner directions. For me, this means letting it cool depressurize until the vent clicks open, then remove the weighted gauge, and let it sit for ten minutes. Then I can take off the lid and carefully remove the jars, letting them sit on a thick towel somewhere, undisturbed until the next day.

Step four: Enjoy

Canned peas can sit on a shelf for up to 18 months, after which time quality may degrade (but safety should not degrade as long as the jar remains fully sealed).

To enjoy your peas, simply pop open a jar and warm them up on the stove. They’re already fully cooked, so you’re just reheating them.

More food preserving recipes

If you haven’t already checked out my new cookbook, Preserving Your Urban Harvest, please do so! It includes 73 recipes to preserve 21 garden favourite crops, including peas!

Pressure Canned Peas

Store garden peas on a shelf using this simple and delicious pressure canning recipe.

Print Recipe Pin Recipe

Prep Time 30

Course: vegetable

Ingredients Equipment Method Notes

Ingredients

Peas
Salt (Optional)
Water

Equipment

1 Pressure Canner

Method

Wash pea pods. Shell peas, discarding pods. Wash peas.
Fill jars quart size or smaller with peas, leaving a one inch headspace.

Add a pinch of salt to each jar, if desired.
Top with boiling water, maintaining one Inch headspace.
Debubble, readjust headspace, wipe jar rim with a paper towel wetted with white vinegar, and attach two part lids to fingertip tightness.

Process in pressure canner, as per canner directions, for 40 minutes, regardless of jar size. If under 1,000 feet in elevation, use 10 pounds of pressure on a weighted gauge or 11 on a dial gauge. If you're at a higher elevation, see notes for the required pressure.
Let canner fully depressurize, as per canner directions, and carefully remove jars, setting them on a thick towel overnight.
In the morning, check that jars have sealed. Sealed jars can be stored on a shelf for up to 18 months. Unsealed jars should be refrigerated and consumed promptly.

Notes

This recipe must be done with a pressure canner, not a water bath canner, nor with a pressure cooker.

Higher elevations:

Weighted gauge:

0 – 1,000 feet: 10 pounds pressure
1,000 – 10,000 feet: 15 pounds pressure

Dial gauge:

0 – 2,000 feet: 11 pounds pressure

2,001 – 4,000 feet: 12 pounds pressure
4,001 – 6,000 feet: 13 pounds pressure
6,001 – 8,000 feet: 14 pounds pressure

8,001 – 10,000 feet: 15 pounds pressure

Snap peas or sugar snap peas are one of those “blink and you’ll miss them” kind of produce. While they’re not quite as quickly there-and-gone as things like cherries, they do have a relatively short span of time in which they produce peas, and it’s fairly difficult to maintain that freshness of snap peas for any length of time. Thus the culinary experience of munching on sugar snap peas with roasted garlic hummus is a treat for my family for a few weeks mid-summer.

For long-term storage of snap peas, I shell them and put the peas in a bag and then in the freezer. While we no longer have the whole shell to eat, we at least have peas to keep us stocked throughout the year. (This year I’m attempting pea pod wine with the discard shells—look for a potential update on that in the winter!)

There’s a recipe for preserving snap peas I’ve been eyeing for a while and have finally tried—fermented snap peas.

Fermentation is the process of fostering an environment for beneficial bacteria to take hold in a food and choke out any bad bacteria. Fermented foods can then be stored for quite some time in the fridge, sometimes as long as several months, depending on the specific fermented food.

Fermented foods are loaded with probiotics and eating these foods can contribute to a healthy gut microbiome, which can have a broad impact on general health, including boosting the immune system. Fermented foods can also be easier to digest, which may be of benefit to some folks, and which can also increase nutrient absorption.

But, really, when you find a good recipe, fermented foods can be just darn delicious. Every week I make a batch of kombucha, which is a fermented tea-based beverage, and we drink it regularly.

So when I finally came across this recipe for fermented peas, it checked off a long list of things I was looking for—a new food preservation project, a way to preserve snap peas beyond their small window, and a delicious new food.

The science and art of fermentation

I’ve spoken before about how fermentation is both a science and an art, and it was me eventually coming to understand that symbiosis that led me understand the appeal of fermentation. The science is fairly basic—you use a saltwater brine (or just salt in the case of some foods like cabbage) to create an environment conducive to beneficial bacteria. These bacteria will thrive and outcompete the bad bacteria. That’s the science of it.

The art is where things can get a bit creative. You can flavour your fermented foods in a million different ways. For these fermented snap peas, I threw in some red pepper flakes and a heavy dash of Italian seasoning for some hot Italian snap peas. However, I could have instead thrown in some dill and peppercorns, or some sliced garlic, or the spices used in bread and butter pickles to make bread and butter snap peas.

How to ferment snap peas

The process is pretty simple and mostly requires patience.

You will need a fermentation vessel. I have a cool little Mason Tops kit that has a straight-sided jar, a glass weight, and an airlock for the top. You can also make do with any jar, a Ziploc bag filled with water as a weight, and a loose-fitting lid to act as a makeshift airlock. And, really, given how the peas are packed tightly and unlikely to float, you could probably skip the weight altogether.

Once you’ve got your fermentation vessel selected, start by putting any spices and seasonings in the bottom of the vessel. Then cram the peas in there. You’ll likely want to put them vertically so it’s easier to fill the narrow gaps with pea pods. (If you just dump the peas in, they’re not likely to be tightly packed and the brine you add won’t cover your peas.)

Unfortunately, I forgot to take any photos of this process for this blog. 🙃

In a bowl, combine water and salt (quantities listed in the recipe card below) and stir until all the salt has dissolved. This is your brine for fermenting. Pour the brine over the peas and ensure they are fully covered by brine. If not, you may need to push the peas further down or make more brine to top it up.

Put the weight on top of the peas, close the jar, and let sit in a cool, dark place to ferment. Fermentation will take several days. (If you’re using a regular lid and not one with a built-in airlock / air release, you will want to ensure the lid is loose-fitting to prevent gas buildup. Still, you may want to briefly and very quickly open the lid once a day to vent gasses.)

You’ll know it’s fermenting because of the bubbles that form and rise to the top. After several days, the peas should be ready. There’s no real test of readiness for fermented foods and it’s sort of a “how does it taste” assessment. Fermentation with saltwater creates a vinegar, so the peas should taste pickled, but the degree of “pickle-ness” is up to you. Once you determine it’s ready you can remove the weight and store the jar in the fridge. It should last several months.

How to use fermented snap peas

It was recently pointed out to me that while my recipes sound tasty, some of them would benefit from a section on how to use them—so welcome to a brand new feature to my recipe pages!

There are a variety of ways to use fermented snap peas:

When I do a BBQ or a dinner for a group of people, my appetizer is usually a baked brie with crackers, and whatever random pickles and preserves I have in my fridge. So this would go great paired with a baked brie, pickled beets, and sugar-fermented blueberries or Saskatoons.
Depending on how you flavour them, they would go great as a side of topping for dinner. I made spicy pickled snap peas with cayenne pepper and Italian seasoning, so it would go great paired with a stir-fry (the spice is more prominent than the Italian seasoning). If you’re eating fermented foods for the beneficial probiotic bacteria, you’ll likely want to add the peas when serving rather than cooking them in the stir fry, since the heat may kill the probiotic bacteria.
Fermented snap peas would also make a wonderful addition to a packed lunch or a bento box, as a vegetable side with a bit of a kick.