good luck soup

tradition with a twist: black-eyed peas, collards, and pork for new year's day

Growing up in North Carolina, my mom would join superstitious home cooks across the Southeast by cooking collard greens, black-eyed peas, and ham on New Year’s Day — a trifecta of ingredients that, legend and Southern tradition have it, brings good luck, prosperity, and progress in the New Year to all those who eat them on January 1st.

• Collard greens are said to symbolize money

• Black-eyed peas represent luck and abundance

• Pork symbolizes forward-moving progress (because pigs always “root forward” as they eat vs. chickens and turkeys, which “scratch backward”)

• Honorable mention to cornbread. We aren’t making cornbread with this meal (actually, I did during testing, but with the pancetta croutons it was just too much!), but cornbread is another traditional New Year’s Day good luck food in the South, representing gold and coins!

These good-luck ingredients are often served as Hoppin’ John, an amazing and significant African-American rice dish that’s made with black-eyed peas and ham hock and served alongside collards and corn bread.

Today, I’m sharing a new, super craveable, one-pot way to pack in all the good luck, fortune, and prosperity that we need for the new year!

It’s worth noting: I actually loathed black-eyed peas and collards when I was a child, and I distinctly remember plugging my nose while eating one tiny bite of each so that I’d get my good luck without having to taste them. You won’t be plugging your nose here — you are going to want to taste every drop of this one-pot New Year’s Day good luck soup, it is DELICIOUS. Seriously: if you think you hate black-eyed peas like I did, I implore you to give them a shot here. Truly delightful.

This is an entirely untraditional way to eat your collards, peas, and ham: a one-pot curry-inspired soup/stew (it’s somewhere between the two!) that’s full of flavor and only takes about 30 minutes from start to finish.

As I mentioned last week, my mom (who we call Crash) cooks batches of curry every year to gift to her friends for Christmas. Earlier in December while I was working to turn her OG recipe into a perfect meal to share with you here, I realized that I could incorporate the New Year’s Day good luck charms into the mix! The result is a nourishing one-pot veggie curry soup that’s topped with absolutely addictive crispy pancetta croutons.

you’ll never want to eat soup without pancetta croutons again 🤤

My in-house critic (AKA my husband, George) took one bite and said, “DANG, that’s absolutely ABSURD!” So — just trust me on this one. Get your pots out, let’s do this! PS, you should go ahead and make it before New Year’s Day — just save yourself a bowl to eat on the 1st for good luck!

I originally wrote this recipe using all chickpeas instead of black-eyed peas, and Swiss chard instead of collards. If it’s not New Year’s Day, you can use those instead! You can also omit the pancetta from the croutons to make this a vegetarian meal, or use bacon instead of pancetta if you’ve got it in the fridge. I love this curry soup in a bowl with pancetta croutons, but it’s also really nice served over rice with lots of cilantro and mint on top. My mom always serves her curries with a nice dollop of yogurt on top, too. As always, there are a bunch of other substitution ideas and notes beneath the recipe!

This week, What To Cook, the book, muscled its way back onto the New York Times bestseller list for a sixth week after its initial five consecutive weeks back when it published in August!!!!! THANK YOU ALL for gifting books and subscriptions galore this holiday season — getting that call from my book editor on Christmas Eve while cooking dinner with my family was the greatest gift!!!

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Serves 4-6 very generously

Cook time: 30 minutes

Tools:

• Large, heavy-bottomed pot (like a Dutch oven)

• Medium skillet

Ingredients:

Good luck soup: