Pea & Ham Soup - A Lockdown Recipe
Posted: Fri Feb 19, 2021 5:59 pm
Lockdown has hit many of hard in the pockets but at the same time we find ourelves with more time on our hands.
With that in mind I'd like to share a recipe for pea and ham soup. It's very, very cheap, packed with vitamins and nutrients and it tastes delicious. It's the best soup I've made for yonks and it costs a handful of pence per serving.
If you're prepared to do a little bit of fiddly cooking you can enjoy this delightful dish
Ingredients
Half a ham shank / ham hock: £1.80
1 box batchelors dried peas: 50p
1 large onion ~15p
Total cost = £2.45. Will make around 6-8 servings at around 40 pence per bowl
That's it for the ingredients.
I bought some bacon from Conlans in Padiham not long ago but it didn't have any fat on it or any marbling. TBH I only bought it because I felt awkward when I went in at the disappointing selection. HOWEVER ... when I cooked had a great flavour. A real gamey streak running through and it had that amazing almost "wild" quality that really good pork has.
So I decided to give Conlans another go and was pleasantly surprised. They had a lot more on offer. Evidently I'd been in on a bad day last time. And this time they had plenty of bacon with good marbling and plenty of fat so I've got a few more packs now safely stored in the freezer.
They also had ham hocks which -if you can find the energy to pick the meat off them- are an absolute bargain. They cost £3.60 but you'll get ~700g of ham that tastes light years ahead of *anything* in the supermark off them. It's a cheap cut of meat because it requires preparation but if you have the free time and haven't ever had a ham hock please take the opportunity - it's one of the tastiest cuts out there and the only reason people don't eat it all the time is because there's a tiny bit of faff to get it ready. There really isn't a tastier piece of pork out there. It's perfect meat for tearing off in chunks and adding to soups or stews etc or just gobbling it own it's own.
It's the kind of thing that Nigella probably eats when nobody is looking.
So that's how and why I decided to cook Pea & Ham soup.
Here's the method:
One day before: Put your dried peas into a bowl and cover with water. Make sure there is plenty of water as they will soak it up as they rehydrate.
Next day: Cover your ham hock in water and cook on a low simmer for 3 hours. You can get away with 1.5 hours but between three and three and a half hours works best to turn the collagen in the meat soft. As the ham hock cooks it flavours the water which becomes an amazing ham stock. Once the time is up carefully pick the hock out of the cooking liquid and put it aside to cool. Cover the ham stock and place this aside too. It's perfectly OK to leave it on the kitchen side for 24 hours if it's covered.
Once the meat has cooled for 2 or 3 hours it should have cooled down enough to handle. Tear of all the lumps of meat and put them aside. Keep all the fat and skin too. Throw away the bones.
Cover the meat that you've taken off the bone on a plate and cover it tightly. Do not put it into the fridge unless it is cold otherwise your milk will go off and you risk any meat in your fridge warming up and going off too. The ham will keep for at least 2-3 days and you can freeze it in lumps once it's cold (if you can resist eating it in one go, it's genuinely gorgeous when it's still warm out of the pot).
Once the stock has cooled there will be a layer of fat on the top. Skim this off into a large pan and use it to fry your onion. You don't want to brown your you onion, you want to sweat it down until it soft.
Once the onion is soft and has sweated down, add you ham stock (make sure you include the sediment at the bottom of the stock pan that comes off the ham - that's the good stuff). Rinse your peas well and add them to the pan. Set the heat to medium and cook the peas, sweated onion and ham stock gently.
As the soup is cooking, take about half the ham meat and chop it up into small cubes. Put this aside.
If you really like good, old-fashioned food like I do you can do something extra here: take half of the pork skin and fat and slice the skin away from the solid fat. Dice the pork skin into very small pieces and put these on the plate with the cubed ham. This is what lifts this dish from "very good" to exceptional. It gives the pork an additional gamey texture and will leave you licking your lips.
After 20-30 minutes of gentle cooking the peas start to go mushy and their skins come off. You'll start to see your soup turn green and the skins floating on top. If you've got a handheld stick blender you can blitz it up and make it smooth but this is only cosmetic and not necessary.
Once the peas are cooked, add in the cubed ham (and the finely diced skin if you're discerning) and allow the soup to simmer very, very gently for another 5 minutes.
Season with black pepper and malt vinegar to taste.
Eat with bread and butter. It's spectacular!
The soup will keep fresh on the kitchen side for a day as long as it's covered. Once it's cold it will keep for another 2-3 days in the fridge. Just be sure to heat it thoroughly until it's piping hot. Be sure to stir it well before serving as it can separate out and peas can fall to the bottom.
To preserve it longer bag it up in strong freezer bags and it will keep for months in the freezer.
If you want to serve this to guests and be fancy you can make a mint & malt vinegar oil to drizzle on top before serving. Simply mix together 1-2 teaspoons of mint jelly/mint sauce with 1-2 tablespoons of malt vinegar and enough oil to hold it together. Don't use a fancy or expensive oil, sunflower oil will do. Mix this drizzling oil by putting the ingredients in an old jam jar and shaking them together. You can whisk it together it you don't have an old jar. Swirl it on just before serving.
If you're a real pork fiend (or want to take the scrimping to the extreme) then there is a final porcine delight for you - take the strips of solid fat that were cut off the ham hock and put them in a pan on a very low heat. Slowly render them down and have on toast as dripping or use the fat to roast your Sunday spuds.
Cheap food. Delicious food. If you're prepared to take a little bit of time on something like this it will make you feel like a king or queen. Food doesn't get any better.
Bon appetit!
With that in mind I'd like to share a recipe for pea and ham soup. It's very, very cheap, packed with vitamins and nutrients and it tastes delicious. It's the best soup I've made for yonks and it costs a handful of pence per serving.
If you're prepared to do a little bit of fiddly cooking you can enjoy this delightful dish
Ingredients
Half a ham shank / ham hock: £1.80
1 box batchelors dried peas: 50p
1 large onion ~15p
Total cost = £2.45. Will make around 6-8 servings at around 40 pence per bowl
That's it for the ingredients.
I bought some bacon from Conlans in Padiham not long ago but it didn't have any fat on it or any marbling. TBH I only bought it because I felt awkward when I went in at the disappointing selection. HOWEVER ... when I cooked had a great flavour. A real gamey streak running through and it had that amazing almost "wild" quality that really good pork has.
So I decided to give Conlans another go and was pleasantly surprised. They had a lot more on offer. Evidently I'd been in on a bad day last time. And this time they had plenty of bacon with good marbling and plenty of fat so I've got a few more packs now safely stored in the freezer.
They also had ham hocks which -if you can find the energy to pick the meat off them- are an absolute bargain. They cost £3.60 but you'll get ~700g of ham that tastes light years ahead of *anything* in the supermark off them. It's a cheap cut of meat because it requires preparation but if you have the free time and haven't ever had a ham hock please take the opportunity - it's one of the tastiest cuts out there and the only reason people don't eat it all the time is because there's a tiny bit of faff to get it ready. There really isn't a tastier piece of pork out there. It's perfect meat for tearing off in chunks and adding to soups or stews etc or just gobbling it own it's own.
It's the kind of thing that Nigella probably eats when nobody is looking.
So that's how and why I decided to cook Pea & Ham soup.
Here's the method:
One day before: Put your dried peas into a bowl and cover with water. Make sure there is plenty of water as they will soak it up as they rehydrate.
Next day: Cover your ham hock in water and cook on a low simmer for 3 hours. You can get away with 1.5 hours but between three and three and a half hours works best to turn the collagen in the meat soft. As the ham hock cooks it flavours the water which becomes an amazing ham stock. Once the time is up carefully pick the hock out of the cooking liquid and put it aside to cool. Cover the ham stock and place this aside too. It's perfectly OK to leave it on the kitchen side for 24 hours if it's covered.
Once the meat has cooled for 2 or 3 hours it should have cooled down enough to handle. Tear of all the lumps of meat and put them aside. Keep all the fat and skin too. Throw away the bones.
Cover the meat that you've taken off the bone on a plate and cover it tightly. Do not put it into the fridge unless it is cold otherwise your milk will go off and you risk any meat in your fridge warming up and going off too. The ham will keep for at least 2-3 days and you can freeze it in lumps once it's cold (if you can resist eating it in one go, it's genuinely gorgeous when it's still warm out of the pot).
Once the stock has cooled there will be a layer of fat on the top. Skim this off into a large pan and use it to fry your onion. You don't want to brown your you onion, you want to sweat it down until it soft.
Once the onion is soft and has sweated down, add you ham stock (make sure you include the sediment at the bottom of the stock pan that comes off the ham - that's the good stuff). Rinse your peas well and add them to the pan. Set the heat to medium and cook the peas, sweated onion and ham stock gently.
As the soup is cooking, take about half the ham meat and chop it up into small cubes. Put this aside.
If you really like good, old-fashioned food like I do you can do something extra here: take half of the pork skin and fat and slice the skin away from the solid fat. Dice the pork skin into very small pieces and put these on the plate with the cubed ham. This is what lifts this dish from "very good" to exceptional. It gives the pork an additional gamey texture and will leave you licking your lips.
After 20-30 minutes of gentle cooking the peas start to go mushy and their skins come off. You'll start to see your soup turn green and the skins floating on top. If you've got a handheld stick blender you can blitz it up and make it smooth but this is only cosmetic and not necessary.
Once the peas are cooked, add in the cubed ham (and the finely diced skin if you're discerning) and allow the soup to simmer very, very gently for another 5 minutes.
Season with black pepper and malt vinegar to taste.
Eat with bread and butter. It's spectacular!
The soup will keep fresh on the kitchen side for a day as long as it's covered. Once it's cold it will keep for another 2-3 days in the fridge. Just be sure to heat it thoroughly until it's piping hot. Be sure to stir it well before serving as it can separate out and peas can fall to the bottom.
To preserve it longer bag it up in strong freezer bags and it will keep for months in the freezer.
If you want to serve this to guests and be fancy you can make a mint & malt vinegar oil to drizzle on top before serving. Simply mix together 1-2 teaspoons of mint jelly/mint sauce with 1-2 tablespoons of malt vinegar and enough oil to hold it together. Don't use a fancy or expensive oil, sunflower oil will do. Mix this drizzling oil by putting the ingredients in an old jam jar and shaking them together. You can whisk it together it you don't have an old jar. Swirl it on just before serving.
If you're a real pork fiend (or want to take the scrimping to the extreme) then there is a final porcine delight for you - take the strips of solid fat that were cut off the ham hock and put them in a pan on a very low heat. Slowly render them down and have on toast as dripping or use the fat to roast your Sunday spuds.
Cheap food. Delicious food. If you're prepared to take a little bit of time on something like this it will make you feel like a king or queen. Food doesn't get any better.
Bon appetit!
Heathen! 
