Pea Shuckers
Have you ever shucked peas?
If you were a country kid like me, I guess there was no way of getting out of it. I guess a kids small hands and too much time on their small hands made the best pea shuckers. It takes a lot of shucking to get a big bowl of peas. Some break them in half, some break off the ends and some strip them. I was a breaker in half.
Peas are a bean or legume or more accurately the seeds of a legume. As a kid shucking them, we'd always eat one or two and they taste like a bitter peanut, if I remember correctly, because its been about 30 years.
I did a lot of shucking when I was down to my cousins house. My uncle had a large garden that usually included lots of peas.
My aunt would sit us all around a table with a bowl and piles of peas. Peas in brown paper sacks, peas in 5 gallon buckets, peas everywhere. We would shuck them and she would cook them. She would wind up doing more of the shucking after we all got bored and ran off.
Some people will break each end off and snap them open or some with fingernails and deft hands will kind of strip them down the middle until they are open. I was clumsy and immediately broke them in half and pried them open. You allow the peas to drop in the bowl and toss the wrapper, so to speak.
I don't think they really need washing, the peas I mean, after they are shucked for cooking. They are pretty pristine looking when they come out of the shells. Some people I believe, keep or soak the peas in water just shortly before shucking, believing they will shuck easier, but If you do a lot of shucking, this is hard on your hands.
As far as cooking them, as I said, they can be a little bitter if they are freshly picked from a garden, so you can add a little sugar to the boiling water when you cook them. A pinch or two will do.
We always just boiled them until tender and put lots of butter,salt and pepper on them. You probably could cook them in cream and add butter for a more soup-like pea dish as well.
Shucking peas was probably one of the few times all us kids and adults were at the same place at the same time, except when we were having dinner and eating those peas. It was kind of a social thing for us all, with laughter and jokes and stories. Especially stories invented by us kids as a reason to get out of shucking those peas. They rarely worked.
