Pea and Ham Soup: Foodie Underdog Recipe #4

Here's a rib-sticking meal of a soup made from only 2 ingredients. Yes, 2 (two). (Plus water.) So easy, tasty, warming, comforting. So cheap -- a massive pot of thick hearty nourishment for about 8 bucks. This is real food at its simplest. Serve it to your loved ones or yourself as soon as you come in from the cold, and all will be well in your world. 

This is so easy, it's hardly a recipe, but you do need to be at home for about three hours while it cooks, so plan it for a day when you've got a good book to read, or a dress to sew, or a huge jigsaw puzzle to finish.

Ingredients

• a 550gm bag of dried split peas. Green or yellow, whatever you prefer.
• a smoked bacon (or ham hock)
• water from the tap

That's it folks. The peas cost $2.35 (bargain of the century) and the ham hock cost $5-7 for the happy pig, free range ones.

Kitchen equipment

• a big pot
• a wooden spoon
• a chopping board and knife

What to do

Put the ham hock in a big pot with at least 3 litres of water. Make sure the hock is fully covered. Turn on the heat and bring to a boil.

Turn the heat down very low, put a lid on the pot, set your timer for 2 hours. Hours, not minutes like I did the first time! It just needs to simmer away quietly. If there are huge billows of steam coming out of the pot or the lid is rattling, it's cooking too fast. Slow, steady is what we're looking for, so the water doesn't all evaporate.

After two hours, take the hock out of the pot, and let it sit on a plate to cool down. Use your kitchen tongs to do this, and a firm grip.

Pour all your peas into the hot water -- which is now, by the way, delicious stock. You don't need to add any flavourings at all. It is perfect already. Keep the heat on low.

Add a couple of cups more water.

Give the peas a stir around, put the lid back on the pot, keep the heat low, and set your timer for 45 minutes (not hours!).

After 45 mins, the peas will be cooked, and starting to disintegrate into a lovely soupy mush. And the hock will be cool enough for you to handle. 

Peel off the skin, take the meat off the bone, and chop it into nice little pieces. Sadly you get to throw out the bone and skin at this point.

Add the meat to the mushy peas, and stir madly with a wooden spoon until all the peas are broken down. Voila, you have soup.

A warning: When you let this soup sit and cool, it will separate into a thick sludgy layer and a stock layer. Don't panic, just stir it up and it will be soup again. And when you refrigerate it, it will turn into a weird jelly -- seriously -- thick green sludgy jelly on the bottom, and clear brown jelly on the top. Don't panic. Just scoop it into a pot, heat it up, stir it around and it will be good as gold.

Will keep for several days in the fridge, but it probably won't last that long because it's so delicious.


Can we make this recipe better?
If you try this recipe, and have any trouble or think you can make it easier, please let me know. Leave a comment and I'll get back to you.

What's Foodie Underdogs about?
Foodie underdogs are people who've never learned to cook, or don't like cooking, but have to feed themselves or other people.

Mealtimes are an ongoing pain in the ass for foodie underdogs. So I've decided to rescue them from their mealtime hell, with totally basic, doable meals, that require an absolute minimum of ingredients, hardly any kitchen equipment, and the least amount of kitchen time possible.

Read about the Foodie Underdogs project