A hearty and savory Southern style soup that will warm your soul and tummy.

Hey y'all. There is an old southern tradition that says you should eat black-eyed peas on New Year's day and the reason is because it is supposed to bring you good luck and prosperity for the new year. Since I was raised in the south, I am very very familiar with this tradition. So today's recipe is black-eyed pea soup and even if you don't love black-eyed peas, I think you might still love this soup because it is that good. My name is Mari and I'm going to make it for you right now. So let's go. All right, let me get you down here and show you how I make this wonderful soup. Okay, so in this pot I am browning one pound of sausage. This is just regular sausage and to that I'm going to add half of a diced onion. All right, and I'm going to just cook this until the sausage is fully done and the onions are translucent. Translucent! All right, and then I will come back and show you what's next. All right, so the sausage is browned. The onions are translucent. So now I'm going to go ahead and add the spices and everything else. So now I'm going to do my spices and this is half a teaspoon garlic salt, half a teaspoon regular salt, fourth teaspoon of black pepper, and a fourth teaspoon of cumin. Dump it all in. Mix this around. I always like to add my spices before adding liquids because I feel like it gives them kind of a chance to bloom and it enhances the flavor. All right, now half a teaspoon of worcestershire sauce. Okay, all right, here we go. A few more ingredients and this soup is all put together. I have one cup of salsa. You can use any kind of salsa you like. This one is kind of mild. If you are going to like your soup really spicy, you can go for a hotter salsa, but I like to usually stick with the mild for a soup. Okay, now I have this is a 14.5 ounce can of fire roasted tomatoes. Dump those in with the juice. Give it a good stir. Nice and combined. All right, now I have two cans of black-eyed peas that I have rinsed and drained. These are, this is a 15, a little over 15 ounce can of just black-eyed peas and those. All right, now you want to mix this gently because you don't want to pulverize your black-eyed peas. So just give it a gentle mix. All right, there we go. Last thing is chicken broth. This is a 32 ounce container of chicken broth. I'm going to go ahead and pour this in here. You could use beef broth if you wanted to. I just prefer the chicken broth, but either one would work here. Kind of like I said with the salsa, you can use really spicy salsa, you can do like I did mild, you can do medium, make your own, however you want to do it. All right, one more stir here. Now I'm going to, this needs to cook for about an hour, 45 minutes to an hour. I'm going to put the lid on and let it boil, or not boil, low boil. And then we'll come back and give it a taste. And at that time we want, we might want to make some adjustments in the seasoning. Like if you feel like it needs a little more salt or a little more something, that would be the time to do it. So I'm going to let this cook for a while and then I will be right back for us to taste it. The soup is done. I'm going to dish up a bowl and we're going to give it a taste. All right, here we go. Normally I have my partner in crime with me, my taste tester, but he does not like soup. So I'm flying solo today. Who doesn't like soup? My husband doesn't like soup. All right, let's give it a taste. It's a little bit hot, but I think I'm going to be all right. Oh wow. I love it. I love this soup. I don't think it needs anything. I really don't. I think it's perfectly salted, seasoned, but when you try it, if you want to amp up the spice, you could, you know, maybe add some cayenne pepper. You could add some jalapenos. You could use a spicier salsa. Whatever you like, make it your own. I really do hope that you give this a try. And if you do, leave me a comment and let me know what you thought. Or if you have any questions, I'd be happy to answer them. And thank you so much for watching my video today. I really appreciate your time. That's a wrap.