Hoppin’ John: “A unique dish in a hundred places”

“Who was Hoppin’ John?…The answer depends on whom you talk to and what you read. Some say John was a servant who made a dish of black-eyed peas and rice that was so good, everyone asked for seconds. That meant he had to keep hopping around the table to accommodate his diners. Others insist that children would hop around the table in anticipation of John’s great creation. And still others say that the name comes from the sound the peas make as they pop and hop around the pan.”¹

Vertamae Grosvenor

The variability and similarities of foods developed in the New World by peoples of African descent can be seen by looking at a specific dish: Hoppin’ John. Culinary anthropologists have termed it “a unique dish in a hundred places.”² If you’re in Senegal – where the dish is thought to have originated – it is called thiebou niebe, and it is “a black-eyed pea stew served with rice.”³ If you’re in Brazil, you will see the dish prepared ritually for New Year’s Day called feijoada completa, where it is a bean stew cooked with onions, garlic, meat, rice, sautéed greens (like kale or collard) as well as oranges and toasted manioc flour. If you’re still in Brazil, it is not New Year’s Day, and your chef is feeling less ambitious, it will be simply feijoada, which is bean stew with onions, garlic, and meat.⁴

For the Gullah and Geechee, Hoppin’ John is a critical part of New Year’s celebrations, just as feijoada completa is in Brazil. Vertamae Grosvenor’s recipe for the dish is: black-eyed peas, smoked sausage, any kind of stock, salt, pepper, garlic powder, and red pepper flakes to taste over “Proper Geechee Rice.” Grosvenor explains that the Gullah Geechee are very particular about how rice should be cooked: “dry and every grain to itself.”⁵

Listen below to hear Grosvenor on NPR talking about even more theories as to how the dish got its name, and how the dish saved her from a hurricane. Recording courtesy of NPR.

Vertamae’s Hoppin’ John

Hoppin’ John has been the centerpiece of the Southern holiday table for generations. NPR’s Vertamae Grosvenor’s says it’s unthinkable to not have the black-eyed peas and rice dish for New Year’s, and offers this recipe from her cookbook, Vertamae Cooks.

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Footnotes

1. Vertamae Grosvenor, “Hoppin’ John,” in Vertamae Cooks in The Americas’ Family Kitchen (San Francisco: KQED Books, 1996), 102. Available here.
2. Olivia Ware Terenzio and Kristen Solecki, “Feijoada and Hoppin’ John,” Southern Cultures 25, no. 4 (Winter 2019): 159.
3. Ibid, 162.
4. Ibid, 160.
5. Grosvenor, Vertamae Cooks, 102 and 134.