Hoppin' John

I made this for New Years, using V8 and pimento spread. It was delicious and a hit with our guests. Not at all bland as other recipes for Hopping John often are, this is a keeper

The only substitution I made was a can of Rotel tomatoes instead of the tomato juice. This is my new black eyed pea recipe for New Year's Day.

Very good rice dish, made it as instructed. I don't know, how much is a package of pimento cheese, but I used 5oz of processed pimento cheese and that seemed to be fine. I also added little more salt and tabasco. Yum!

This was quite an excellent and tasty rice and bean dish. I omitted the butter and had to use black beans instead of the black-eyed peas because my store didn't have any canned. I don't think this affected the taste much (although I've never tried this dish before). Also, I used V-8 juice instead of tomato because that's what I had on hand and imitation bacon strips (Morningstar Farms) to reduce fat further and make it vegetarian-friendly. (Excellent one-dish meal, by the way.) I noticed that what distinguishes this hoppin' john dish from others was the cheese. However, I am not familiar with pimento cheese so I used monterey jack and jarred pimentos. Next time I might try this with pepper jack as I really like the heat. This time I sprinkled liberally with hot sauce (and, believe it or not even more salt) when serving. Taste was very complex even without extra heat and salt - I really loved it! Thanks much for this great recipe!