Split Pea Soup

I’m the first to admit that this is not really a visually appealing meal. But sometimes you can turn that in your favor. If you can successfully call these leprechaun smoothies, well, you can just tell your kids that this soup is made by cooking real leprechauns.

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The basics for just about any soup base: one onion, one carrot, and one stalk of celery. Dice them all up finely and toss them in a large dutch oven. I originally got this recipe from an old crock pot recipe book called Crockery Cookery, but I really strongly prefer my dutch oven. It’s bigger, it seals in moisture much better, and it cooks faster so I don’t have to remember to start it in the morning.

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Can’t have split pea soup without split peas, right?

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Like any package of dried beans, you’ll need to briefly pick them over. Spread the whole 16-ounce bag out onto a kitchen towel, and pick out any underripe peas or tiny rocks that may have snuck in. You’ll only end up with maybe 5-10 bad pieces, but nobody wants to eat even one rock, right? When you’re done, just lift the towel by the corners and dump all the peas into the dutch oven with the veggies.

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Pour in 8 cups of water.

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Now for the leprechaun meat — I mean, ham. I found these strange leg rounds at my grocery store, which is what inspired me to try this dish in the first place, because they had a big old bone in each one, and bones are great for soups. You could add several big chunks of ham like I did, or go minimal and add in just a ham bone, saved from some other meal (or maybe your butcher’s counter would just give you one they already trimmed the meat off of, you never know.)

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Stir in 1/2 teaspoon of salt, and 1/4 teaspoon of pepper. This is like the fundamental base of all seasoning. If you’re ever at a loss for how to flavor something, start with 1/2 tsp of salt and 1/4 tsp of pepper. It rounds out pretty much any recipe meant for about 4 people.

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Stir everything up a bit, put on the lid, and cook in a 325 degree oven for about 2 hours. If you’re curious, the basic conversion for any crock pot recipe into a dutch oven recipe is this: take the number of hours on LOW, and divide by 4. If the recipe calls for cooking on HIGH in the crock pot, divide by 2. The temperature of the oven is always 325 degrees.

This recipe originally called for 8-10 hours in a crock pot on LOW, so dividing by 4 gets you 2 to 2.5 hours in a dutch oven (with the real oven at 325 degrees.)

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When it’s done, pull out your cooked chunks of meat and dice them up into bite-sized pieces. Make sure to hunt down any bones you may have used, since they’ve probably separated from the meat by this point.

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Dump all your cut up meat back into the soup pot.

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Stir aggressively for a few minutes, and the last remaining structure of the peas will just disintegrate, making the texture smooth and thick.

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Did you know leprechaun goes really well with a nice moist cornbread?

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Happy Eating!

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Split Pea Soup

1 onion
1 carrot
1 celery stalk
16 oz. (1 lb.) bag split peas
8 cups water
1 ham bone, or several ham hocks
1/2 tsp salt
1/4 tsp pepper