How to soak peas for soup, porridge and mashed potatoes?

Pre-soaking bean can significantly reduce their further cooking. In addition, this procedure will allow you to control the process of preparing soups in which you plan to add peas.

If the beans are not pre-soaked and immediately added to the soup, then other vegetables can be digested, and the peas will not have time to become soft. Or vice versa - the meat may not reach the state of readiness and remain tough, and the peas will already turn into porridge.

In addition, some chefs believe that soaking peas can prevent bloating.

What water should be soaked in?

Peas must be soaked only in cold water. If you fill it with hot water and leave it like this for several hours, this will lead to acidification of the product and the finished dish will be spoiled by the unpleasant taste of legumes. The problem is that externally spoiled beans do not differ from normal ones.

For soaking, it is better to use filtered or bottled water so that the peas do not absorb harmful impurities from the water that flows from the tap. If it is not possible to use a filter or bottled water, take boiled water.

To speed up the process of softening the peas, you can add a little soda to them. But not sugar or salt, as some housewives advise: they, unlike soda, are not able to accelerate the process of softening legumes.

Soda added to peas will reduce the content of vitamin B1 in it and slightly affect the taste of the product. Therefore, before adding soda, you have to choose whether you want to get a healthy or quick dish.

Now we will analyze the soaking process in more detail:

1. To begin, put the required amount of cereal in a deep bowl and sort it out. It is necessary to remove all the garbage, as well as chopped and spoiled peas, so that they do not spoil the taste of the dish.
2. Now rinse the peas several times until the water is completely clear.
3. Pour the peas with cool water so that it covers them 1-2 cm.
4. When the soaking process is completed, the peas must be washed again.

How much time to soak?

There are several factors that influence how much time you spend soaking:

• Selected pea variety (Idaho variety is the fastest to prepare)
• whole peas soften longer (6–8 hours) than chopped peas (from 20 to 180 minutes);
• the temperature of the room in which the beans are located (in a warm room, soaking can be reduced by 2-3 hours, in a cold room, stretch to 9 hours);
• When soda is added, the soaking process is also reduced.

Determining the readiness of the peas is quite simple: if they doubled, you can start cooking.

How to soak peas quickly?

If you need to cook a dish very quickly, choose chopped or as fresh peas and soak it in warm (but not hot!) Water with the addition of soda.

1. Rinse and sort the beans thoroughly.
2. In a separate bowl, stir the soda at the rate of 2 teaspoons per 2 liters of water.
3. Pour the resulting mixture into the beans and add still warm water, so that the liquid covers the peas on a school desk of centimeters.
4. After the soaking is over, be sure to rinse the peas thoroughly to get rid of the specific taste of soda.

If you choose chopped peas, soaking should not last more than 60 minutes. If you cook whole peas, soak them in a warm soda solution for about 2 hours.

How to soak peas at night?

Prolonged soaking can ruin the product. It is not difficult to determine that peas are overexposed: a kind of foam will appear on the surface of the water. This effect suggests that the beans turned sour during soaking, and this can ruin the taste of the future dish.

If you still want to save time and leave the peas in water for the whole night, you should remove the container with it in the refrigerator or put it on a cool window so that the product does not deteriorate.

How to soak chopped peas?

The rules for soaking chopped peas are no different from the usual process, except for the time they must spend in the water. For chopped peas, 20-60 minutes of soaking will suffice.

Since chopped peas are cooked much faster, they can not be soaked at all before cooking or stewing. Then the cooking process can increase up to 2 hours - and these are all the differences. Importantly, do not forget to sort out and rinse chopped peas.

How much is peas cooked after soaking?

If the peas were previously left in the water for 2–4 hours (this should be done with whole peas), then the cooking time is reduced to 1.5–2 hours. If the beans spent in the water for more than 4 hours, then their cooking can take no more than 30-60 minutes.

To see if the peas are ready to be added to the soup, take out one pea and try to crush it. If this is done easily, then soaking is time to end. In addition, do not forget to observe the size of the beans. Their double increase is also a sign of readiness.

When the peas are already cooked or baked, its readiness is also easy to check. Take one pea and try to crush it again. If this is easy to do, the dish is ready.

Those who want to cook pea puree should wait another 20 minutes and only then remove the pan from the heat. So all the peas will become very soft, to mash them in mashed potatoes with the help of a pusher or a blender will be quite simple.

Nuances and Tips

After you fill the peas with water, try not to shake it and do not disturb it at all, otherwise this will lead to the appearance of foam and acidification of the product. Also, do not leave the legumes in the water for longer than 8 hours, otherwise the product will definitely become acidic and will only have to throw it away.

Salt the dish with beans at the end of cooking. If you add salt earlier, then the peas will cook longer.

If you need to add tomato paste or fresh tomatoes to the dishes with peas during the cooking process, you need to do this at the moment the beans become soft. Otherwise, the acid of the tomatoes will not let them cook for a long time.

As you can see, soaking peas really makes the cooking process easier. Follow all the rules described above, and cooking peas will not cause you any difficulties, and the result will pleasantly surprise you.