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Pea and Ham Soup
Serves 8-10
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| Apart from being quick to cook, and easy to cook – most soups just require chopping, then slow-cooking – soups often taste better the day after making, meaning you can get them done ahead, or make a double batch and freeze one lot for a quick meal some time later. | |
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Ingredients
Broth
bones of a cooked ham (ham on the bone), around 1.2-1.5g
1 large onion, quartered
1 stick celery, cut into chunks
1 large carrot, cut into chunks
1 tablespoon chopped thyme
12 peppercorns
2 bay leaves
4.5 litres cold water
Soup
1 large onion, finely chopped
2 large cloves garlic, crushed
1 tablespoon butter
675g (3 cups) split green peas, well rinsed under running water in a sieve
4 litres ham broth
225-300g (1½ -2 cups) ham chunks, taken off the bone, chopped (do not include fat or gristle; this can go in the broth)
salt to taste (you probably won’t need any because of the salt in the ham)
freshly ground black pepper to taste
2 tablespoons chopped parsley
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Method
Broth
1 Rinse the ham bones and put them in a large deep saucepan with the vegetables and seasonings. Pour the cold water in. Bring to the boil, then skim off any foam, partially cover pan with a lid and cook gently for 4 hours. Strain. When the bones are cool enough to handle, pick over and set aside any appetizing pieces of meat, chop them coarsely, put them in a container, cool, cover and refrigerate.
2 Cool the broth, then cover it and keep it refrigerated until the next day. When ready to carry on with the recipe, remove the broth from the fridge and spoon off any congealed fat.
Soup
1 Put the onion, garlic and butter in a very large saucepan with 1 tablespoon of water. Cover with a lid and cook gently 5-7 minutes until softened. Stir in the peas, then pour in the ham broth; if necessary, make up the quantity to 4 litres with water.
2 Bring to the boil, skim, then lower the heat and partially cover with a lid. Cook gently for about 1½ hours, or until the peas are very tender. Add the chopped ham meat, check the seasoning, adding salt if required, and black pepper. Cook for 15 minutes more, then ladle into bowls. Sprinkle with parsley and serve.
Making the soup
You need a ham, of course. If you’ve cooked a ham in warm weather, the last thing you’ll feel like doing with the leftover bone is making a wintry soup. But save the bone. Wrap it and store it in the freezer until one day in the middle of winter, when you can’t shake the cold out of your bones, and you yearn for the comforts of a good old-fashioned soup, you’ll be thankful you didn’t give the bone to the dog. What you also need to do, is to save some of the meat along with the bone. Cut off all the tiddly bits, fat and gristle included, then sort it into piles – the crappy bits for the broth, the good bits for the soup, and wrap and label everything, then put it in the freezer with the bone. Roll on winter!
Failing a leftover ham bone, you could buy bones from the butcher and fresh sliced ham off the bone. This is the expensive way of doing it, but sometimes when you’re desperate…
If you can, start the soup a day before you want to serve it, so that the broth can cool. The fat then comes to the surface and can be removed easily.
The broth can be frozen at this point if you wish to make the soup at a later date (you could freeze it as soon as it is cool enough, before chilling it and skimming the fat, if you need to, then thaw and skim the fat before using it). There are so many options! For a change add diced swede and plenty of chopped parsley to the soup. Serve soup with thick slices of sticky-fresh sour dough bread.
Photo Credit: Aaron McLean
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