Easy "Pea"sy

Today I spent a few hours on my feet shelling peas.  A tedious job but worth the effort.  Thanks to a good friend of mine, the process went much faster than in previous years.  She literally saved me hours of work by one simple process.  Here are the steps to successfully shelling peas...........
First off, I put my pea pods in the sink to wash them.

From the wash, they go into a pot of boiling water for three to four minutes.....get the water boiling first, put in the peas, then start your timer.

 

From the hot water bath, they go into a sink of cold water......it is supposed to be ice water but I didn't have any ice and it seemed to work fine.

For photo purposes and to show you how to shell the peas, I held the pod backwards so you could see how it was done.  Instead of shelling the peas into my hand, I held the pea pod the opposite direction and pushed the peas into another large pan.  First you grab the pea pod (with right hand) and pinch close to the top, holding the very top with your left hand, slide your fingers down the pod and out pop the peas.  You might have to inch your fingers down the pod to get them out but still.....the process goes very quickly.  Also, by doing it this way, you've killed two birds with one stone because you won't need to blanch them later (anyways, that's my way of thinking).

 

 I shelled two full containers of peas.  Each container is 10" around and 5" tall.  That's a lot of peas...Yum, yum.  I would have had a bit more but I kept getting a spoon and eating a few here and there.  Raw peas are totally delish.

After bagging all the peas, I ended up with 18 pint-sized bags of peas.

 I started out with 2 of these five gallon paint buckets and 2 ice cream buckets full of pea pods and after shelling them all, I ended up with 1 five gallon bucket of empty pods.  This was our second picking and the plants are still producing madly...............with this new process of shelling, all I can say is...bring em on.