Pea and Ham Soup (Slow Cooker or Stove)

I am beyond amazed that after over 13 years of food blogging I didn't have my recipe for Pea and Ham Soup on the HRK website. That's now corrected. A lot of the soups I make are based on lentils as the grain, but this recent cold snap had me longing for good old-fashioned Pea and Ham Soup on a cold Winter's evening. I bought a packet of dried split peas and a ham hock, and this Pea and Ham soup was born.

Pea and Ham Soup is never going to look pretty in a photo, unless the dinnerware and napery are full of contrasting colour. It's brown more than it is green, perhaps olive coloured in the right light could cover it. Olive is quite a fashionable colour again right now here in Winter, even though I think we used to call it khaki, and everything comes around again if you wait long enough. Still this soup doesn't need to be glamourous to look at, when it tastes so damn good.

Mr. HRK was beside himself when he could start to smell the aroma of the soup cooking throughout the house. It reminded me of the smell of Pies and Mushy Peas at a bakery, or of when I am cooking them at home. Pie lovers, you will know what I mean.

I cooked this precious nostalgic soup, long and slow for 10 hours in the slow cooker and the result was a tasty thick soup full of homely ham and pea flavours, just like I remembered it. 

Preparation time: 10 minutes, Cooking time: 10 hrs

Serves 6-8

 Ingredients:

500g /1lb dried split peas 

1 ham bone, ham hock or bacon hock, as long as it is meaty (1.2-1.5 kg/2.3-3 lb is the most common size) You need at least 1 kg.

2 garlic cloves, crushed

1/4 tsp salt ( because the ham bone is going to be salty) Add more salt later if you need it.

3/4 tsp black pepper

2 bay leaves, fresh or dried, I used fresh

1 onion, finely chopped

1 large carrot, peeled and finely chopped, or 2 small

3 celery sticks, chopped finely

8 cups (2 litres/qts) water

Parsley for garnish

Crusty sourdough bread for dunking

Instructions:

Tip the packet of peas into the base of the slow cooker, and push the ham bone in.

Place the rest of the ingredients around the ham bone, and pour over the water.

Slow cook for 8 to 10 hours on LOW (I set mine for 10 with a perfect result), or for 6 hours on high.

If you are cooking the soup in a large pot on the stove, 2.5 hours should do it. If you are using the Pressure Cooker, 1 hour 20 minutes / or in the Instant Pot on HIGH.

Using long tongs, remove the the ham bone from the cooker, and shred the ham meat. You 

are doing very well if you can manage to remove the ham bone in one piece. This was a great job for Mr. HRK. He discarded the bone and the fatty skin superbly. Could you remove the bay leaves too please, and he did.

Whilst the meat is out of the pot, use the stick blender to give the soup a blitz, two or three times. This will just thicken it a touch, not make it completely smooth. This is how we like it. 

Have a taste of the soup to see if it is salty enough, add a touch more salt if necessary.

Return the ham meat to the slow cooker.

Serve in soup bowls, garnished with parsley and we love some buttered toasted bread on the side for dunking. Toasted homemade sourdough is my preference. However, there are lots of breads to choose from. There are no rules about this, use what you love.

Cook's notes:

• Split peas are sold in packets at the supermarkets, generally in the soups section, near the dried lentils. No need to rinse them, if bought in a packet from the supermarket. 
• If your ham bone doesn't live up to expectations and deliver a real flavour burst, you can boost the flavour of the soup by giving it a sprinkle of chicken stock powder. Better than nothing. I have never needed to do that though.
• This soup should be a continued celebration of the Christmas ham bone, which has been kept in the freezer since Christmas.
• Sometimes a ham bone can be disappointing, and has little meat on the bone. This can be the lot of a Christmas ham bone, where the bone was really picked clean, by those who don't think about the precious soup to be had from the bone later on. If this happens, rather than waste the bone entirely, buy a chunk of ham, and chop it into small pieces, and throw that into the pot with the ham. It can be shredded later. A little bit of cheating is totally allowed. 
• However, ham bones can be bought from the supermarket, which is what I generally do. They are vacuum sealed, and have a decent amount of meat on them, as they are intended for soup. Your soup will freeze perfectly for at least 3 months. It will also keep in the frig for 4 to 5 days. Friends of mine happily eat this soup every night for as long as it lasts during the week. Easy peasy. It is that good. It doesn't taste like peas, it has quite a savoury and earthy flavour, with the ham imparting so many delicious flavours.
• There's no need to cook the onion separately, it will cook in the slow cooker, aided by all the juices and fat from the ham.

This recipe is partly based on my Mum's, as much as I can remember, and partly from the Recipe Tin Eats website. Some recipes just don't change that much. Mum cooked hers in a large pot on the wood stove for many years, which warmed up our home beautifully during a cold Winter in Central Queensland.

Warmest wishes,

Pauline