Split Pea Soup with Ham Hocks

Despite moments of doubt and faith, the Split Pea Soup came out very well. The ham hocks I used didn’t have as much flavor or meat on them as they usually do, but I augmented them with some ham I had around. At the end I added crushed red pepper, which gives zing to the soup…which some folks will love and some…not so much. I’ll be coming back to this soup again, as it’s one of my favorite winter soups.

Before starting, I like to surf the web and browse through books to see how different folks approach a dish. The biggest two points of contention for split pea soup are whether or not you need to soak the peas overnight or not. Personally, I usually do, but I’m interested in trimming as much work off the recipe as I can, so I decided to go with out the soak.

The other point is whether to make the stock separately or not. Some want you to make it, skim it and strain it, others to just throw everything in by themselves. I opted for something between the extremes, and decided to do the ham hocks by themselves, then throw the rest in after I skimmed the surface. I’m in to using as few pots as possible.

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Of all the recipes I found, his one is the closest to my approach:  http://simplyrecipes.com/recipes/split_pea_soup/

• Split Peas 1 lbs (2 cups)
• 8 cups water
• Ham Hocks 1 lb 2 oz
• Olive oil 2 tbs
• Garlic 3/4 oz. minced
• Onion 12 oz chopped
• Carrots 8 0z chopped
• Celery 8 oz chopped
• Cooked ham slices cut into half inch piece (4 oz)
• Salt to taste
• Crushed Red Pepper 1/3 tbspn

First I pu the ham hocks and bay leaves into the water and brought it up to a covered  boil, which gives me time to chop up the vegetables.  First up should have been the garlic, since I wanted to cook it by itself but as usual, i forgot I was adding it and ninced it last. I did still cook it by itself, over a medium low heat, adding in the onions when it started to turn golden.

The ham hocks had been boiling gently for about forty five minutes at this point, so i took them off the stove and skimmed the scum, of which there really wasn’t a lot.

After about six minutes the onions were getting translucent, so I added the carrots and celery set the timer for five miutes, and did some cleanup. After five minutes, I stirred them and reset the timer for five more minutes.

At this point the hanm hocks had been going at it for about an hour or so, and I puled them out and let the stock cool off for a minute to skim the last of the scum off it. Then back to occasional stirring of the vegetables.

Again, there wasn’t much scum on top of the broth, but there was a bit of fat i felt like taking off so I ladled a few scoops off the top into my fat separator, one of my favorite gizmos. Then I added the vegetables and brought the whole thing back to a boil.

After a five minutes of gentle boiling, the stock and vegetables came together nicely. I threw in two pinches of salt to season it since it hadn’t picked up much from the ham. From here I could have gone lots of places for this soup, including throwing in a can of white beans and the ham from the hocks and had a great soup. But we’re on the quest for split pea, so I forged on.

I’d rinsed the split peas in a colander to make sure there were no pebbles in amongst them. Once in a while you’ll find something, and it’s much better to do it now than when you bite down on it. Adding in the peas, I brought the pot back to a good simmer, and covered it for 30 minutes, during which i picked the ham off the hocks and added it. that only amounted to about two tablespoons of ham though, so I added in around a quarter pound of 1.4 inch thick sliced ham.

With 12 minutes left on the clock, and the peas still pretty crunchy, I started to have my doubts about the whole “you don’t have to soak them overnight” thing, but fell back on the advice given to the Brits during WWII.

Keep calm and carry on.

At thirty minutes the peas were soft enough to be tolerable, but the constancy still wasn’t quite right. I gave it another twenty minute on a medium simmer.  This is a good reason not to throw in the feature ingredient, in this case then ham bits,  until your almost done. I could blend the soup at this point and it would probably help, but first I’d want to rescue the ham (Insert four letter word that starts with D and rhymes with ham).

Boiling the peas separately for five minutes, and draining before adding would probably have cured this. It also looks like I used about twice the amount of celery, onions, and carrots I needed, which makes the blemder option also attractive.

After the twenty minutes had gone by the peas were pretty well cooked through, though they had a graininess to them that I’m not wild about. Some vigorous stirring gave them a smoother consistency. I added in a few pinches of salt and tasted the result, which wasn’t bad, really, though I was standing there with a spoon in my hand and that, “what does it need?” look on my face.

A third of a tbspn of cracked red pepper was my best guess, and it seemed to improve things a bit without making it especially spicy.

Now I’ll let it sit for about three hours and see how it fares for dinner.

To finish it off, I toasted a piece of bread, cut it up in cubes and sprayed it with olive oil, tossed it with a pinch of salt,  then heated it in a saute pan until it got more or less crunchy. Crunch croutons make the dish.

All in all, it turned out well, but next time I’ll hold back on the vegs, and go back to soaking, or at least pre-boiling the peas for five minutes.