Anyone have a pea sheller?

[Equilibrium]

The thought of sitting down and shelling peas this year by hand with so much else to do is sorta eating away at me. I checked around and found some very expensive pea shellers that probably work really well but... there's the cost of the unit. I found this one, http://www.pressurecooker-outlet.com/peasheller.htm. Does anyone own this and does it work? Anything that could cut my time shelling peas would be a good thing just as long as I could afford it.

[TEX]

I bought one - it was worthless.

[Equilibrium]

For darn near $40 plus whatever they'd hit me up with for shipping and handling.... that's not what I wanted to hear. Bummer. Are there any that DO work out there that you know of? I keep hoping something is out there that's affordable that might work that I could be on the look-out for to pick up 2nd hand maybe.... or.... is that just wishful thinking>>>>?

[MIKENSUE]

I bought one - it was worthless.

Glad I read that. I was thinking about buying one myself. Now I know not to waste my money. Thanks Tex!!

Sue

[cubcadet]

I never used one, being that I don`t have much use for one but, I saw a real good one on youtube-

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HnVFZVtjtQY

[Equilibrium]

It was almost defibrillator time once I made the connection what brand his "expensive" electric pea sheller was and how much it cost, http://www.leemfgco.com/store/index.php?act=viewProd&productId=9 until... he said, "Now it's time to show you my economical model". Phew.... well almost a phew.... his economical model is his black lab. OK.... that's not going to work for me but.... it was funnier than H E double hockey sticks. Great video... you've got me lusting after somebody's pea sheller though. Here's another one that's a coupla hundred dollars less than the "expensive" model he has, http://www.leemfgco.com/store/index.php?act=viewProd&productId=5. I can't afford that one either but... I did find something interesting by following around looking for shellers. This little jobby he 1st showed in his video that he said started acting stupid on him looks a little sturdier than the one I found and it's only $10 more, http://www.mainstsupply.com/product.cfm/3/7/38035. It's worth a try otherwise I'm having a pea shelling party and everyone's invited!!!

[cubcadet]

If you don`t do bulk peas for resale, and can`t justify the cost, do what I do- yank the whole plants out when the seed pods are mostly all filled, tie the roots together and toss them over the rafters in the gee-rage, if you have one. Or, make a series of frames out of something like tree saplings and rope, if you have the room. Let the pods dry out good. You could do some indoor jogging on the kitchen floor, crush them good and shovel the mess into a clean garbage can and wait for a windy day and toss the mess into the air, letting the peas drop down onto a sheet and the chaff will blow away. Home production may justify getting back to basics.

[KarenBC]

I bought one - it was worthless.

oh dear...I definitely didn't want to hear this...I "shelled out" and bought one this winter for the upcoming season.

[patience]

I think I read somewhere that pea shellers work better if you BLANCH the peas first--does something beneficial to the pods to make it easier? I got an old sheller from a flea market, but haven't tried this yet. I hope it works. Hand shelling sucks, but mashed peas are worse. :confused:

[Equilibrium]

What brand of pea sheller did you buy please? I'm leaning toward maybe trying an old hand crank wringer used for dirty clothes before the advent of the modern day washing machine.

[oldtimer]

What brand of pea sheller did you buy please? I'm leaning toward maybe trying an old hand crank wringer used for dirty clothes before the advent of the modern day washing machine.


Now you're talking!!! We use the wringer on our Maytag washing machine, just don't tighten in all the way down as I don't want it squashing the kids' fingers as they like to do it.

Any wringer will work, and so will most pea shellers, they just fail to tell you how to properly use them so you have peas flying all over the place or mashed peas.

Heat a big pot of water to boiling, then throw the peas pods and all in the hot water to blanche them . It takes about one minute and they will turn a bright green color. Then run them through your sheller or wringer, the pods will pass through the rollers and the peas stay behind. Slicker than anything, we've raised and shelled peas bushels at a time to feed a family of eight.

I don't know why they don't tell you to blanche them first because that's the ticket.

[Equilibrium]

"Now you're talking!!! We use the wringer on our Maytag washing machine"
Noooo....not me talkin'.... that was you talkin'.... I got the idea to go that route from YOU! :D I forgot where you posted that though.

[MrsL]

I never even knew such a thing eisted! Will go off and Google in a minute, just in case I ever come across one.
Have to say, though, that shelling peas is a pleasure for me.

[ushellit]

Hi,
My name is Troy Freeman I am the founder and director of the Free-Man house.
We are a not for profit Christian based sober living house.
I started the Free-Man house in 2007 with one house that was donated by A Pastor I met while I was in the Texas prison system for the 7th time. I had a dream that I wanted to be involved in a ministry that was willing to help those less fortunate than myself! That was hard to believe that there were less fortunate people than myself, but there are those that have not yet found the love of Jesus Christ, and I was convinced that I could become a leader in this. I started the Free-Man house we now have 5 houses in Dallas Texas, we are involved with the homeless and people that have nowhere to go after release from prison and treatment centers. I have now started a business that involves the residents of the Free-Man house in a work program that is called Ushell it. We make automatic kinetic pecan nut krackers and the famous automatic Mr. Pea Sheller it shells all kinds of peas. These both can be found on our website ushellit.com. We also have a website that is called free-manhouse.org
YOU CAN FIND US ON EBAY UNDER USHELLIT09

[Aut2]

The thought of sitting down and shelling peas this year by hand with so much else to do is sorta eating away at me. I checked around and found some very expensive pea shellers that probably work really well but... there's the cost of the unit. I found this one, http://www.pressurecooker-outlet.com/peasheller.htm. Does anyone own this and does it work? Anything that could cut my time shelling peas would be a good thing just as long as I could afford it.

I got one 2 year ago don't waste your money its a piece of junk, its the MR. LEE pea sheller, but there is a place in Mississippi that makes pea shellers that will shell 2 to 3 bushels at a time i don't know what they cost but we grow about 1 acre of peas a year and take then to a guy and he shells them for $2 a bushel most of what i sell is still in the hulls. I pick the ones that are ready and they keep producing more peas so don't pull them up as someone said in one of the post.

[Terri]

First I blanched the peas for perhaps 2 minutes, and I dumped them in a colender.

When they were cool enough, I pickerd up a pod and squeezed it in the middle with 2 fingers and peas squirted out one end. I then milked the pod of its peas.

Quick and easy!!!!!!!!!!!

[MasterChief]

We bought the electric pea sheller for $250.00. It was worth every penny. We could shell a couple bushels of peas in an hour. It made the job go a lot faster and was very easy to use. Just remember to keep fingers away from the rollers, will draw your fingers in towards the rollers when feeding the peas.

[oldtimer]

We bought the electric pea sheller for $250.00. It was worth every penny. We could shell a couple bushels of peas in an hour. It made the job go a lot faster and was very easy to use. Just remember to keep fingers away from the rollers, will draw your fingers in towards the rollers when feeding the peas.


It would be considerably cheaper to buy a wringer washing machine and then it could do double duty for you by actually washing clothes when you're not shelling peas. You can get a good wringer washer for about twenty five bucks. A plain old hand operated wringer can also be had for about the same price of an old green colored pea sheller from fifty years ago sells on ebay for less than thirty bucks, they work great. I've seen them often advertised as a "small wringer" and then you can really pick em up cheap as they don't know what they have.

I am still opting for the washing machine.

[patience]

We have a wringer washer that is great for laundry and useless for shelling peas. Made one heckuva mess in the washer, too. A few peas DID shell out and went ricocheting all over the room. I've bought 3 different pea shellers and none of them work. I've tried the blanching trick, tried them at all stages from immature to dried hard, and had no success whatever with anything except the old painful hand shelling.

If the peas are too immature, they get squashed into mush. if they are too dry, the pods are too tough and they still end up getting crushed. If they are blanched, they still get smashed.

I don't raise peas at all now.

Pea shellers are very well designed to separate pea-raisers from their money, and that is about all they are good for, IMHO.

[JarDude]

We have a wringer washer that is great for laundry and useless for shelling peas. Made one heckuva mess in the washer, too. A few peas DID shell out and went ricocheting all over the room. I've bought 3 different pea shellers and none of them work. I've tried the blanching trick, tried them at all stages from immature to dried hard, and had no success whatever with anything except the old painful hand shelling.

If the peas are too immature, they get squashed into mush. if they are too dry, the pods are too tough and they still end up getting crushed. If they are blanched, they still get smashed.

I don't raise peas at all now.

Pea shellers are very well designed to separate pea-raisers from their money, and that is about all they are good for, IMHO.

That is good to know.

[oldtimer]

We have a wringer washer that is great for laundry and useless for shelling peas. Made one heckuva mess in the washer, too. A few peas DID shell out and went ricocheting all over the room. I've bought 3 different pea shellers and none of them work. I've tried the blanching trick, tried them at all stages from immature to dried hard, and had no success whatever with anything except the old painful hand shelling.

If the peas are too immature, they get squashed into mush. if they are too dry, the pods are too tough and they still end up getting crushed. If they are blanched, they still get smashed.
Pea shellers are very well designed to separate pea-raisers from their money, and that is about all they are good for, IMHO.

Boy, what do you have for a wringer? Everyone and I mean everyone I know that has used the wringer with blanched peas at the state of maturity they need to be for canning if they've blanched the peas for a minute until the pods turn bright green have had not trouble. We have shelled bushels and bushels this way. All the Amish I know shell theirs this way. If the pods are blanched there shouldn't be any of the ricocheting you describe. We did notice that you can't have the wringer cranked down like if you were washing clothes or if you over blanched them some will smash but that's eliminated by using it with the wringer unclenched. How long did you blanche them?

I don't believe the wringer would shell hard dry peas like some of these southern style peas but I've not tried it. I'd think you could thrash them out like navy beans or Hutterite beans.

[patience]

Yeah, I read about the "bright green" blanching, and tried it a couple times with one or two minutes in the hot water. They smashed and made pea moosh.

I have seen other people try the wringer washer with the same result--pea soup and peas flying all over the laundry room. I have a Maytag wringer machine in like new condition. If you unlatch the wringer, the peas won't go through it--just sit and smear green pod juice on the wringers that I get to scrub off before laundry day. Latch the wringer and it makes moosh.

I refuse to try this again. I can shell peas just fine by hand. It is a mindless task, good for when you need to chill out for a while. I rather enjoy it.

But I don't care that much for peas anyway. I refuse to give them freezer space, and canned peas are about pure starch, and taste like spoiled library paste. For several years, we just put out a handful to eat some fresh, but lately haven't planted any at all. After enough disasters trying to mechanically shell them, I don't think I will ever grow peas again as long as I live. I am finished with this. After I bang my head into a brick wall for a while, the wall does not move and my head gets sore. Enough. :mad: I have a couple pounds of seed back there somewhere in the seed box, but I'll trash them when I get around to sorting out old seed.

When we raise beans for drying, I just let them stay on the vines until the whole plant is dry, then pull them up and pick off the pods. Lay the pods on the garage floor until they are crispy dry and crunch 'em up any old way. Long ago, we had our 2 girls and all the neighbor's kids ride tricycles over them, and it worked like a charm! Swept them up and winnow with a box fan sitting on the floor, then do it again and they are ready to store.

[Terri]

Yeah, I read about the "bright green" blanching, and tried it a couple times with one or two minutes in the hot water. They smashed and made pea moosh.

1-2 minutes is not quite long enough. I boiled mine for 2-3.

[oldtimer]

Go to Holmes County and tell the Amish it doesn't work! That's where we learned it and we pick peas at the rate of five or six five gallon buckets at a time and shell them this way with no problem. You blanch them just until when you grab a pod you can "milk" the peas out. That is they'll be bright green and the pod slippery but the peas still hard. Try just a hand full of peas at a time until you get the hang of it. We had a little trouble at first, just like picken chickens, you have to get the scalding temp and time right. Also, you feed the peas through one pod at a time, not a handful. We usually have several kids gathered around feeding the pods in. That's why I con't crank the wringer down but if you're alone, crank it then. I cant see any reason why you should have trouble once you've the hang of it unless you've got some strange variety of pea or somehting. We have always used Laxtons, Lincolns, and Green Arrows.

Our Amish relatives shell bushels of English peas to can too and they don't have any trouble so ?????? Experiement with temp. and time. We use our old cast iron wash pot out in the yard for the blanching.

[windmo]

Since our pea garden is pretty small it's not worth even considering a pea sheller - it just made me remember though, being a little girl and sitting in the kitchen with my mother and the ladies from down the road, listenening to them talk while they worked over buckets of peas :)