The Story of Quebec Peas

Fresh is best, but fresh is almost impossible to find unless you grow your own. Open-air markets are about the only source of fresh peas and only early in the summer. A few Quebec farms still grow peas to sell fresh in their pods. A number of large farms grow the vegetable to supply the frozen market. Quebec’s main brand is Arctic Gardens, trademark of the French vegetable processing company Bonduelle, which is based in Quebec in St-Denis-sur-Richelieu. Purists may argue but, when heated in a sauce or soup, frozen  peas add a fresh look and, in a sauce, can taste almost like fresh. If you’re making a braised dish, drop them, still frozen, onto the hot food and let them thaw and warm up in the final minutes of cooking.

Producing green peas for freezing is a science and Bonduelle uses a system with its Quebec growers that sometimes involves harvesting this perishable vegetable 24 hours a day, seven days a week. The timing is decided based on a calculation that it takes from 22 to 23 days from the time the pea plants burst into flower for the peas to be at peak sweetness and tenderness. The harvesting date is determined by a gadget known in French as a “tendéromètre”. If the peas are judged ready, a giant harvesting machine cuts an entire field of the pea plants, cracks the pods open, shakes out the peas, and loads them into a bin. A truck comes periodically to take the peas to the nearest processing plant. After several washings and inspection to make sure all pods have been removed, the peas are divided mechanically by size, blanched to seal in their colour, blown dry so they freeze separately rather than sticking to each other, and frozen at minus 4 degrees F (minus 20 degrees C). The whole process, from field to freezer, takes no more than three hours.