Split Pea Soup with Ham

I decided to try my hand at making split pea soup for dinner.  My wife has always made the split pea soup, but I thought I would give it a go.  My wife was busy, so I found her recipe and set to work.

Split Pea Soup

• 1 1 /2-cups washed green split peas
• 2 onions chopped
• 3 stalks celery
• 1 /2-teaspoon curry powder
• 1-teaspoon salt
• Pepper to taste

1. Combine ingredients, add enough hot water to cover and bring to a boil
2. Add two sliced carrots, 1 pork hock or ham bone and eight pieces of crumbled crispy bacon and bacon drippings.
3. Set heat to simmer, occasionally stirring the ingredients, cook for 4 hours

The recipe called for the 1 1 /2-cups of dried peas.  The bag looked like it held about two-cups, so I just used the entire bag – no sense in having a small amount of dried peas hanging around.  I cleaned and chopped the two medium yellow onions and then the celery, I added the curry, salt, and pepper to the ingredients in the pot and covered the ingredients with hot water and set the pot on the stove on high heat to boil.

I had already thawed a ham bone we had previously saved from a spiral cut ham that had quite a bit of meat remaining.  Once the pot was boiling, I added the ham bone and one sliced carrot (that was all we had in the refrigerator).  I asked my wife if I had enough water in the pot and she took a look and indicated that I had used too much onion and that she adds all the contents by feel.

She also asked me to add some additional sliced ham into the soup.  I retrieved a frozen bag of ham chunks, thawed it and added about 1 1/ 2-cups of sliced ham pieces into the soup.  We let the soup simmer for about three hours.  When we were getting close to dinnertime, I made some corn bread in the oven.

We had a very nice dinner of split pea soup accompanied by corn bread.  My wife informed me the soup was good, but not quite the same as she likes to make it.  I enjoyed the soup and we have some that we will package up and freeze for some night when we don’t feel like cooking.

Adventures In Food: Author: Kerry Howell