Cooking Frozen Green Peas

Whether they be the pea that comes in the small paperboard block from the grocery store or the one from a food purveyor, have you ever noticed that after several minutes to a half hour of steaming, boiling, or (HMMmm) sauteing (?) they might be edible but they still have the wrinkles and you still get the occasionally tough gnarly pea?

Yep, I thought so...

Seriously, if you want to cook a great frozen pea add plenty of salt to the water and boil it for 1 1/2 to 2 Hours. They don't really start taking on good flavor from the salt or plumping up from the water properly cooking them until after the first hour.

Not true you say? Well I guess you may just have a better frozen pea than me...but I need to make what I have work. Just ask the English what it takes to cook peas for a good 'mushy pea' side dish. Then you will better understand the time it takes to make a good or semi-good product into a delicious dish.

And its not like boiling peas takes up a lot of your other time in the kitchen when you really don't need to watch them much, unless you like to watch them swirl around and around in the water. I like to do that occasionally, kind of like a de-stressing or relaxing exercise of the mind. Not unlike daydreaming. (but you can call it work!)