Whenever someone asks the question - what is your favorite food? - it's an almost impossible question for us to answer. We could make you lists of foods we love, but it is so hard to pinpoint it down to one specific favorite (or even one type of cuisine). The theme for Week 32 of the challenge was "your favorites," which led to me staring blankly at the computer trying to figure out what we could make. Huaraches? Maybe. Tacos? We've already done quite a few Taco Tuesdays. Catalan-style chickpeas? Did that already (even if I haven't finished writing that post yet). I could go on and on. Eventually I decided that it would be good enough to just pick something we liked that we've never made yet at home. The answer? Split pea soup.
Green split peas, the star of the dish
I've loved split pea soup since I was a child. It's warm and comforting, and really good for you, packed with tons of vegetables. Although we've had all different types of split pea soups over the years, the one that really stands out in our minds is the one we had on a vacation back in 2007. We were on an Alaskan cruise and it was the designated day for the ship to go through a passage of glaciers. It also happened to be a really chilly day for an Alaskan summer and the weather and visibility were so bad that we couldn't really get in to see the glaciers. But what they did do was serve up an amazing split pea soup on deck to try to help us keep warm. Technically it was a "Dutch pea soup," but it was so warm and luscious and had incredible flavor from the ham, the peas, and the vegetables. I hoped to emulate that soup with this challenge.
Dutch pea soup on our Alaskan cruise
I wanted to make the soup in a slow cooker since I thought it would be less work. The flavors would be good and the slow cooker would do all the work. In the end, it didn't end up being much less work and the prep took a ridiculously long time (I think I was moving exceptionally slowly after getting up late that day), but I think that was mostly on me. I looked to this recipe for slow cooker split pea soup for guidance to try to get the proportion of water and cooking times right, since I'm still a novice with slow cookers and haven't done too much experimenting.
Soup ingredients (can't see the ham)
The ingredients for the split pea soup were:
- 1 lb (or so) of dried green split peas, picked through and rinsed ($2.15)
- 2 russet potatoes, peeled and diced ($0.98)
- 1 medium onion, diced ($0.30)
- 1 bunch of carrots, diced ($1.50)
- 1 small head of garlic, minced ($0.15)
- 1 lb of ham bones (with meat on them) ($4.55)
- 7 cups of water ($0)
- 3 large spoonfuls of chicken bouillon ($1)
- 1 bay leaf ($0.10)
- 1 bunch of fresh parsley, minced ($1.50)
- salt and black pepper to taste ($0.10)
For approximately $12.33, we got an entire slow cooker full of split pea soup, enough for 2 dinners for 2 and lunch for me another day. It made a lot of food for the price, which was great.
Slow cooker with all the ingredients finally inside
Prep and cooking for the soup is technically really easy. Just prepare all the ingredients and throw them in the slow cooker together. Turn it on and it's done in 8-10 hours on low or 4-5 hours on high. My only problem was that I am slow at prep and I woke up late, so in order for us not to eat at 11pm, I had to start the slow cooker before every single ingredient was prepped. Our kitchen also has really limited counter space, which meant that for a time, I was chopping on the stove, and then I had to carry the ingredients across the kitchen, and all of that just added up to a lot of wasted time and slowness. It also meant that for the first hour or so, the lid on the slow cooker was not on tight and that I had to keep opening it to drop in more stuff, so that was a big mess and exactly how you're not supposed to operate a slow cooker.
Finished slow cooker soup
In the end, what I ended up doing was cooking on low for 5.5-6 hours, finding that it was way too watery, and raising it to high for another hour. It was still kind of watery, so for the next 20 minutes or so, I kept it cooking while I smashed maybe half of the potatoes against the side of the slow cooker to make it more starchy and thicken it up, while A took the ham bones and shredded the meat from them. Once we finished that and we added salt and black pepper to the soup to give it more flavor, we covered it back up and let it cook on high for another 20 minutes.
Total, it ended up being almost 8 hours, but about 1/4 of that time was on high. I think on low it would have needed way more than 8 hours the way our slow cooker was running. By the end, it was nice and thick, the way split pea soup should be. We were worried when 6 hours in, it was still really watery, so we had to be a little more "active" with the slow cooker than we originally planned.
Dinner!
The soup was quite good by the end. The carrots and potatoes were nice and soft, the flavor of the soup was good, the peas were almost pureed. The ham was good, but it wasn't as strong in flavor as we thought it would be, so we added more salt than expected. I think next time, I would prefer to use the diced ham, but there wasn't any at Trader Joe's and the butcher recommended the ham bone for soup. This is the first time I've ever made split pea soup and even though there are some things I would improve for next time, I would consider this a success!
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