Sugar Snap Pea Salad

Since the spring vegetables are ripening in our garden one at a time, I’ve been able to obsessively focus on finding recipes to highlight the perfectly ripe and exciting because they’re finally ready to eat veggies.  For a couple of weeks now the object of my obsession has been sugar snap peas!

The wild and gorgeous sugar snap peas growing in my backyard garden

My criteria for a good recipe these days is twofold:

  1. It has to highlight the vegetable, not hide it
  2. It can’t contain rare or expensive ingredients that aren’t already (or at least regularly) in my refrigerator or pantry. I’m more that happy to play around with substitutions and encourage you to do the same!

Here’s our favorite recipe so far this season. Enjoy!

From top left to right: Today’s harvest of peas from my backyard garden, the assembled pea mixture, yogurt draining with a thumbs up from my oldest daughter.

Sugar Snap Pea Salad
modified from this Bon Appetit recipe

Ingredients
1 cup plain, whole-milk yogurt*
1 lemon, zest and juice*
1 small garlic clove, finely grated (yes, grated! Just try it, its amazingly easy)
8 oz. sugar snap peas, strings removed, thinly sliced on the diagonal
2 Tablespoons olive oil, plus more
Salt and black pepper

Assembly 
Using a fine mesh sieve, drain your yogurt. Once its drained, pour it into a bowl, and whisk with 2 teaspoons lemon juice (save the rest for other recipes), garlic, and a large pinch of salt in a medium bowl.

Toss sugar snap peas, oil, and 2 teaspoons lemon zest in another medium bowl; season with sea salt and pepper.

To serve: Pour dressing into a shallow bowl and pile sugar snap peas in the center. Drizzle with more oil, season with more pepper, and top with more lemon zest.

ENJOY!

Fully assembled salad. I think it looks good enough to eat!

I’m still on the lookout for great pea recipes, so please tell me how you’re using them and send me your favorite recipes in the comments below!

*Recipe Notes: 

  • You could use greek yogurt and skip the draining step, if you prefer.
  • I save the extra juice in a small glass jar in my refrigerator and find myself constantly reaching for fresh lemon juice.
  • Every time I juice a lemon, I use a vegetable peeler to remove the zest before juicing (and that really is important; its nearly impossible to do it after you’ve juiced it). I store the peel in a small glass jar in my freezer and use it for all kinds of things… hot tea, water, cocktails, etc. 

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