Every family has one. The sibling who got the spotlight, the magazine covers, the seat at the best table. And somewhere behind them stands the other one, just as gifted, who got the same inheritance and none of the credit.
In the Southern pea patch, the famous one is the Sea Island red. The one who stood behind is the red ripper.
Two peas, one crossing
Both peas begin in West Africa, where farmers domesticated the cowpea more than three thousand years ago. They grew it alongside millet and sorghum, prizing it for its protein, its leaves and its gift to the soil. That knowledge crossed the Atlantic with the enslaved Africans who were forced to carry it. Seeds, and the know-how to grow and cook them, took root in the American South and became part of its cooking.
From there the two peas went separate ways. The Sea Island red settled along the coastal islands of South Carolina and Georgia, planted among the rice. The red ripper moved inland, planted alongside corn, especially in Alabama and South Carolina. Same ancestry, different ground. One system of rotation and intercropping, African in its logic, fed both.
The pea farmers trusted
The red ripper was no obscure curiosity. It goes back to at least the 1850s, when it was also known as the Tory pea, and it was a staple in Southern seed catalogs for generations afterward. By the early 1900s the catalogs were praising its toughness in drought and heat. Farmers of the era valued its heavy growth as a way to build up worn-out soil, and a look through antique catalogs from the Southeast shows it listed as a must-have.
It had vigor. In poor, tired soils where other crops sulked, the red ripper performed. It fed the family and healed the field in the same season. It was also good to eat, which is the thing that finally keeps a seed alive.
So when the story gets told that one pea, the Sea Island red, proved vigorous enough to survive into the 1900s, ask what that leaves out. The red ripper was growing in those same fields, in those same decades, and it didn't just survive. It was bought, planted and trusted. The story we've been handed names one pea and skips the one that was standing right beside it.
How the red ripper got left behind
The Sea Island red got a story, a brand and backers. When the Slow Food movement began celebrating heritage ingredients, the Sea Island red was positioned as the great survivor of Lowcountry cooking. Food historians took it up, then chefs followed the historians. Marketing and real investment carried it to the broader market and onto menus across the country.
Meanwhile the red ripper sat by and watched. Nobody was writing its story. Nobody was putting it on menus or telling cooks why it mattered. It slipped out of the conversation, then out of the catalogs, then out of most people's memory. The pea didn't get worse. It just lost its publicist.
That's the injustice. The Sea Island red earned its place, and it is not the villain here. But a pea doesn't deserve to be forgotten because someone else got the microphone first. The red ripper has the same African roots, the same Southern history and the same worth. And now, with its story nearly erased, it carries something extra: it's a pea worth rescuing.
A flavor from the past
The red ripper has been grown in the soil of this region for generations, and that matters. Johnny McNair grows it in our sandy loam, the same kind of ground it has always known. That gives us an honest picture of how this pea tasted in the past. When you eat it, you are tasting a story and a history.
Open a pod and the colors alone tell you this is no ordinary pea: brick red, clay brown, ivory cream, some speckled and spotted, and a few the color of dry-sage green.
The flavor is rich and deeply savory, with a mineral, earthy note that tastes like the soil it grew in, and a slightly sweet finish on the back of the palate. The texture is meaty and hearty and holds together instead of collapsing. For a cowpea it's a generous pea, a bit bigger than the Sea Island red, but not so big that it gets unwieldy. It cooks evenly all the way around. No blown-out skins, no hard centers.
And here is the part cooks will love: these red rippers are harvested fresh, at the green-shell stage, not dried like most Sea Island reds on the market. There is no overnight soak. You can go straight from the pod to the pot.
My first pot
I was eager to taste this legendary pea for the first time. Johnny had gifted me a one-pound bag, and I took it out of the freezer, emptied it into a colander and rinsed it. The colors lit up under the water: ivory cream, eye-popping brick red, milk chocolate brown, a few of a lively pastel green. My mouth was already watering.
I wanted the most stripped-back, traditional preparation I could manage, to taste the true flavor of this pea - getting it as close as possible to the way it was cooked and tasted in the past. I had a few things on hand: fatback, bay leaves, chicken stock, green onions, a Santee sweet onion, heirloom garlic, unsalted roll butter, bacon grease, Carolina Gold rice from Anson Mills, and a mix for johnny cakes from Marsh Hen Mill. That was everything I needed for an old-school red peas and rice supper.
I brought equal parts chicken stock and water to a boil and dropped in the fatback. Once the pot was rolling again, I salted it and added the peas with a few dried bay leaves. I covered the pot and let it go on low heat for just over an hour.
Then the rice. In a small, heavy-bottomed pot over medium-high heat, I melted the butter and bacon grease together and added the washed Carolina Gold, coating every grain in the fat. I let it go about five minutes until it turned aromatic and the grains on the bottom browned to gold. I added equal parts stock and water, brought it to a boil, turned it down to a simmer, and salted lightly. A crushed garlic clove and a chopped green onion went into the peas, and I covered them again.
While the rice cooked, I made a ripper pea gravy. I took some peas and broth from the pot, added chopped heirloom fish peppers (one green, one red), chopped Santee sweet onion and a little chive, and pureed it all with an immersion blender. The result was barely spicy, rich, savory and aromatic. Then I fired up a skillet and made the johnny cakes.
I built the bowl: rice first, peas and broth ladled over, the gravy on top, a little fresh green onion to finish, and a hot johnny cake (some of you know it as a hoecake) on the side. The pea was creamy, rich and savory, and it was perfect with the gold rice. The gravy added another layer of creaminess, and the sweet saltiness of the johnny cake tied the whole dish together. It was probably the best peas and rice I have ever had.
Almost perfect. I was missing one of my favorite Southern condiments, pepper vinegar. I had made a fresh batch with rice vinegar and fresh fish peppers. I dribbled it over the top and took a bite, and that bright, peppery tang took me to another universe. It was the last ingredient the dish needed.
I don't think I will ever want to eat another field peas and rice meal without red rippers. It was that good.
An invitation to the kitchen
The red ripper is the pea of Southern farmers, of an African inheritance and of ground made healthy again, and it has been waiting for a cook to notice. For the chefs of South Carolina, Georgia and North Carolina, here's a chance to put a forgotten heirloom back where it belongs, and to tell the whole story of Southern peas instead of half of it.
Give it the love it was robbed of.
These peas are available now, fresh-frozen, from our weekly ordering page.