Slow-Cooker Ham and Black-Eyed Pea Soup

Peasant food, cucina povera, whatever you want to call it, this soup descends from a cooking tradition that focuses on maximizing the flavor of humble ingredients. With little more than beans and a ham hock, which is more bone than meat, it’s almost confounding that this soup turns out so delicious. The slow cooking certainly contributes, simply by allowing time and heat to extract as much flavor as possible from the ham hock. Not that this couldn’t be done with stovetop cooking, but who wants to stand over the stove when you could leave this cooking all day and come home to dinner?