Minty Buttery Green Peas Recipe

This quick and easy green peas recipe makes your frozen peas taste so much better! Six ingredients and ten minutes are all you need to whip up a great side dish.

When you are in need of a side dish for your mindfully crafted mains, busting out a bag of frozen green peas from your freezer and dumping them in boiling water can certainly work. I’ve been there and done that. Then, I discovered a better way to cook green peas—sauté them in butter. It takes pretty much the same amount of time on the stove as boiling the peas. But the sautéed peas are noticeably different, and I think you’ll agree with me when you try this minty, buttery green peas recipe.

As usual, before we turn on the stove, let’s quickly go through a few things to help you get the most of the recipe and cooking experience.

Fresh Peas or Frozen Peas?

If you have the choice, should you choose fresh peas or frozen peas? Green peas, also known as garden peas, are seasonal foods. When in season, no doubt I’d grab a few bags of very fresh peas from the farmers market. However, frozen peas are not necessarily any less tasty and nutritious than fresh, because they are harvested at the peak of ripeness with the perfect sweetness and fruiting body and then flash-frozen. Plus, they are available year-round in pretty much any grocery store. So you can count on frozen peas to be the best peas for consistent freshness.

Ways to Cook Frozen Peas

There are usually cooking instructions on the packaging of your frozen peas: boil or microwave.

Boil

The most basic way to cook frozen peas is by boiling them. Here’s how to do it. Bring a pot of water to a rapid boil and cook the peas in it for two or three minutes, drain, and serve with a knob of butter.

Microwave

If you really want to keep things simple, you could put frozen peas in a bowl and microwave them as suggested on the packaging. However, I do not recommend this method since the peas tend to get dry and lose their fruitiness.

Sauté

Sautéing in butter is by far my favorite way of cooking green peas (fresh or frozen). If you are vegan or vegetarian, you could use olive oil or coconut oil instead. Let’s move on to the steps. It’s really simple. 

How to Make Minty Buttery Green Peas Recipe

1. Sauté in butter. Melt unsalted butter over medium heat. Then sauté your frozen peas with some minced garlic.
2. Season after cooking. Once the peas are cooked through, transfer them to a serving dish, then season with salt and pepper to taste. Seasoning with salt too early will dehydrate the peas. 
3. Add fresh mint. In my opinion, adding mint should also happen after cooking, even after allowing the peas to cool down a bit. Mint bruises very easily, and heat will quickly turn the green color to dark brown.

Now that you’re armed with the useful information about green peas and how to make them taste better, go ahead and pair them with some BBQ ribs or beef burgundy, purée them along with some fresh herbs and parmesan cheese to make a green pea pesto, or throw them in your steak salad, risotto, pea salad with other veggies topped with feta, pea soup with shallots and cilantro, and quinoa salad with leafy greens for a nice extra dimension.

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