Thick as Pea Soup

Until this week, I'd never made pea soup before. I am not a big fan of soup anyway and somehow the pictures of lumpy, green-gray soup have never seemed appetizing. But dried legumes are such an inexpensive and healthy food. The start of a brand new year was the perfect opportunity to try something I had never done before and a cold winter's day was a great match.


I skimmed through several recipes on the internet and gathered my ingredients: one cup of dried split peas and one cup of leftover Christmas ham from the freezer. (I know-- again with the leftovers-- but being thrifty means using up the things I already have, preferably in unique ways.)

The first recipe instructed me to run the dried peas through a food processor and then mix the resulting flour with water to form the soup base. Unfortunately, all my food processor did was whiz the split peas around and around until the motor overheated. I suppose a wheat grinder might produce better results but my old electric grinder probably wouldn't have worked and honestly I was too lazy to lug it up from the basement.


Note to self: save up and buy a hand operated wheat grinder.


Plan B: Soak the beans in water for several hours (adding water as necessary to keep the peas barely covered), cook them slightly to soften (about 15 minutes) and run them through the food processor again.  I included all of the soaking water in the processor.

This worked much better, however, the "soup" was still not smooth enough so I cooked the mixture for ten more minutes and gave it another spin in the food processor. I added approximately 1 1/2 cups additional water to keep the soup the consistency I wanted. I added the ham and let the soup heat through.


Overall, my family was not impressed with my efforts. My 16 year-old remarked that it looked like baby food. My 7 year-old (who was recovering from a queasy tummy anyway) told me that just looking at the soup made him want to vomit. The 2 year-old simply ignored the soup all together. Only my sweet 13 year-old son ate every last bite and that was only because he didn't want to hurt my feelings. He did suggest that I not cook it again for a very long time.


In the past, I have encouraged my children to try out new foods by reading a story that goes along with the meal. I did a quick search on Amazon and found a few books that I think would have been fun to read with my kids. Maybe next time....




I'll admit that the soup was pretty bland. I figured that the ham would flavor the soup but it didn't. I think some salt, a clove or two of garlic, a half a cup of diced carrots and perhaps a bay leaf would make nice additions.

On the plus side, the spring green color of the soup was gorgeous. I had trouble with the thick soup sticking to the bottom of the pot so I was carfeul not to cook the soup at a very high temperature. The result was that it retained the color of fresh garden peas.