Pea and Ham Soup

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Prep Time 15 minutes mins

Cook Time 25 minutes mins

Course Soup

Equipment

• 1 Pressure Cooker
• 1 Stick Blender

Ingredients

 

• 240 grams split peas (yellow)
• 4 carrots
• 1 onion
• 1 swede
• 1 turnip
• 1 parsnip
• 2 litres water
• 1 bacon hock

Instructions

 

• Peel the vegetables and roughly chop into medium sized pieces.
• Combine all ingredients in a pressure cooker and cook until pressurized. Cook for a further 10 minutes.
• Allow to stand and cool for roughly 20 minutes. Remove the meat from the bone and return it to the soup.
• Puree the soup using a stick blender until thick and vegetable lumps have been removed.

Whenever I think of cold weather and soup, this pea and ham soup is always the first thing to come to my mind. As a child growing up, this was grandma’s go to soup, and you could almost guarantee there was going to be pea and ham soup available when you went to visit in the winter months. These days I still love to make it, and I will often portion it up into single serve containers and freeze it for a convenient lunch throughout the week.

About the soup

The great thing about this recipe is that the ingredients it uses are all relatively cheap and easy to find. I’ve gone for yellow split peas, but any other color of split pea would work just as well. The choice of vegetables used is an interesting one, and definitely reflects the cooking of my grandparents era. I will say this is about the only recipe in my collection currently that has use for swede, turnips or parsnip. I typically wouldn’t cook with these vegetables if I wasn’t making this soup.

Growing up as a child, I always remember grandmas pressure cooker. It was a silver metallic pot, with a lid that had to be twisted to fit in and seal shut. A heavy weight then slid onto the lid sealing the unit. At pressure, this weight would lift and making a whistling noise and steam was released from the container. I did inherit my families pressure cooker, and for a period I use to cook with it. However, these days I have invested in a new pressure cooker that has safety values and is a fair bit simpler to use.

Preparing the soup

Take all your vegetables, peel them and then roughly chop them up into chunks. Add these to the pressure cooker, along with the other ingredients. Seal the pressure cooker and then add it to the heat and bring to pressure. Once at pressure, continue to cook for a further 10 minutes.

Once the soup has cooked and had a chance to cool slightly, use a pair of tongs to pull out the bacon hock. Using a sharp knife, remove the meat from the bone and return it to the soup.

From here you can either transfer the soup in batches to a blender to puree up, or I like to use an immersion blender and puree it all in the pot. It should come out nice and thick, with some small chunks of ham throughout the soup. If you still have chunks of vegetables, you probably need to puree it a bit longer.

I serve with a generous seasoning of salt and pepper. You could also add a small dash of cream, although I think it’s not necessarily needed.

The leftover soup will keep in the fridge for a week, or freezers well for about 3 months.