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Thursday, April 10, 2008

The longest soup ever

What's that saying about the best laid plans of mice and men? Every Sunday I sit down and menu plan, making sure that my more time consuming experiments are scheduled for the weekend when I don't have less than 2 hours to make dinner, eat it, and get my stuff ready for the next day before going to bed.

So I saw a recipe for split pea soup a couple weeks ago on some blog and knew I wanted to try it out - I'd never had it before. I looked through a bunch of different recipes and noted it was a bit of a time consuming soup, so I scheduled it for Sunday night's dinner.

So Sunday afternoon I went to make the soup, and realized I'd forgotten to soak the beans in water overnight. Sigh. So much for soup for dinner. So peas were soaked overnight. However, there was no way this soup was going to be cooked and ready Monday night in my short cooking window. Especially since I'm a soup puree-er and for the sake of good neighbor relations I don't use the loudest appliance in the world after 9pm. Which means the soup was cooked on Monday night, and then chilled overnight.

Tuesday night I finally finished the soup. This is a soup 3 days in the making. It had better be worth it. The results? Well I was pleasantly surprised. I was worried I wouldn't like pea soup, but it was really good and creamy. And Jon loved it so much he went back for seconds. He may even have licked the bowl. And then he cleaned up the kitchen for me! This soup has super powers. (By the way, I topped the soup with a little nonfat plain yogurt and the playboy bunny design was completely unintentional)Split Pea Soup
1/4 lb dried split peas
1/2 strip of bacon fat (separated from bacon)
1 clove garlic, minced
1/2 onion, chopped
1 stalk celery, chopped
1 /2 leek, trimmed and chopped
32 oz chicken broth
1 Tbsp dried thyme
1/2 pkg frozen peas, thawed

1) Soak dried peas in cold water overnight.
2) Heat bacon fat in soup pot over medium-low heat.
3) Add garlic, onion, celery, and leek. Cook about 15 minutes.
4) Add chicken broth, dried peas, and thyme. Bring to a boil. Reduce heat and simmer partially covered for 1.5 hours. Let cool completely.
5) Add thawed peas and puree in food processor until smooth. Return to pot and heat over medium heat until warmed through.

Serves 4.
Each serving has:
Calories 145.6
Total Fat 3.0 g
Cholesterol 2.5 mg
Sodium 1,621.4 mg
Potassium 632.1 mg
Total Carbohydrate 14.5 g
Protein 15.4 g

8 comments:

  1. That's some commitment to pea soup. You're much kinder to your neighbours than we are. We bring out the heavy duty blender for late night smoothies when the mood strikes.

    The soup looks good.

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  2. I agree with psychgrad.. that is some commitment!

    Holy moly 3 days?!?!

    Split pea reminds me of my Grandma. She used to make the most amazing split soup and she didn't leave her recipe to anyone. =(

    Mom's tried to make it several times- coming close... but its not quite grandmas.

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  3. The last time I had split pea soup was a really really long time ago, and I totally didn't like it.

    I wonder if I've finally grown up enough to like it. ;)

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  4. heffner would be so proud of this ;)

    i'm beginning to realize that soups are some of my favorite meals. granted, it took branching away from canned versions and making the homemade stuff to realize this.

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  5. Hmmm... was it the split pea soup that made him clean the kitchen or the yogurt playboy bunny? ;) Just kidding :) Kudos to you for having the patience; I would have giving up till next weekend and ordered a pizza.

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  6. I am definitely not eating pea soup, but it looks really pretty! :) The green is so summery. Your homage to playboy made me laugh. You probably couldn't get it to do that again if you tried!

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  7. Bet you were dying to eat it by the time it was ready! I've made a similar mistake in forgetting to soak lentils for a soup... ah well we live and learn.

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  8. wow! it was playboy bunny! im sure hubby saw it before you did, right?

    i just cant eat split pea soup after watching the exorcist. i... just... cant...

    and im sorry if i just ruined it for you :)

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