More peas, please! 17 delicious ways to devour Britain’s most brilliant vegetable

They’re healthy, versatile, sustainable and available. Yet pea consumption in the UK is at a 50-year low. Here are the curries, dips, pasta dishes and even cakes that could turn all that around

It’s not good news for the pea farmers: pea consumption in the UK has fallen to a 50-year low. According to data from Defra, the average Briton ate just 37g of peas per week in 2025, down from 144g per week in 1975.

Though a classic British staple, peas are not for everybody. Apparently only 22% of gen Z associate peas with Britain at all (which is patently ridiculous: 90% of the peas we consume in the UK are grown here, while we produce about 160,000 tonnes for freezing alone each year).

But if I’m honest, I ate zero grams of peas last week; ditto the week before. I like peas – or at least I’m rarely offended by them – but as a suppertime option, they seem a little mundane. And while all the pak choi and purple sprouting broccoli in the fridge risks going floppy with age, frozen peas can be postponed indefinitely.

It shouldn’t be this way. Peas are healthy, versatile, sustainable and insanely available. If you’re like me, you don’t even need to buy peas to eat them: I’ve always already got some. But if you’re still in need of inspiration, here are 17 delicious ways to help keep the UK pea industry afloat.

Pea soup is a good place to start – especially if it’s Felicity Cloake’s perfect pea soup, an ideal distillation of this classic dish. As with all these recipes, frozen peas are called for at this time of year – but, as Cloake says, frozen and fresh are pretty indistinguishable in soup. In one sense frozen peas are fresher than fresh peas anyway – chilled within 150 minutes of picking, before they develop any starchiness.