Makes about 20 cups
1 left over ham bone with leftover meat on bone
1.5 onions, peeled & diced small
3 stems of celery
3 carrots, peeled & diced small
1 Tbsp of salt
3 cloves of garlic peeled & chopped
1/3 cup of cooking oil
2 bay leaves
2 lbs dried split peas, rinsed
1/3 cup of flour
Liquid smoke
Worcester sauce
Tobacco Sauce
- Add ham bone to a 6qt stock pot and fill with water to cover ham and bring to a boil.
- For the celery, remove leaves and add them to the pot. Once it boils, turn down temp to a low simmer for 2 hours.
- While ham is cooking slice white part off of celery and discard. Use a peeler on the back side of the celery to remove the “stringy” part to discard, then dice celery small. In a separate fry pan over medium heat sauté onions, carrots and celery for 5-10 minutes until soft. Add bay leaves salt & garlic and sprinkle flour over mixture stirring for 1-2 minutes. Remove from heat.
- After 2 hours remove ham from stock pot and slowly incorporate 2 ladles of broth to veggie mix forming a roux. Add split peas to the stock pot with just broth and simmer until peas are tender.
- While peas are cooking remove the ham from the bone and dice ham, discarding the bone.
- Once peas are done strain peas to a food processor and puree.
- Add pureed peas, diced ham, veggie mixture and a few dashes of liquid smoke, Worcester sauce, tobacco sauce to the stock pot and cook on a low simmer for 30 minutes until serving.
Pea Soup is a favorite of my husbands’s. It has been a least favorite of mine so our friends have stepped in and made it for him.
Every Christmas, our friend Carol always ensured he had some of her pea soup, even if she had to remind me to make sure and give her the ham bone, the good news for me is it often involved her and I having a glass of wine together. She said her secret ingredient is Marjoram.
Our friend Mark makes it often and somehow a few bowls always end up at our house. He adds potatoes and sometimes for a special twist a packet of Sazon Goya.
My Dad loves soup so he and Mike decided to develop a Pea Soup recipe together. I am not sure how but my house smelled amazing. Was that really pea soup? I tried a bite much to everyone’s surprise. Wow I had been missing this my whole life? It was delicious right down to the last bite of the big bowl I enjoyed. My Dad loves to puree the whole soup but Mike likes it with only the peas pureed. Either way it tastes great. Another couple of tips of my Dad’s is you can add chicken stock to the ham bone instead of water for increased flavor. He also recently researched and found some people use half frozen peas or top it with caraway croutons-yum!
They say our taste buds change, and you never know, try some of this, your taste buds might thank you!
Enjoy!
-Angie