The Real Thing

Split Pea Soup (Betty Crocker Cookbook)

Habitant Pea Soup was a staple of my childhood, so I was pretty excited to produce the real thing, from scratch, in a an area rife with French Canadiana.

2 1/4 cups dried split peas (1 lb), sorted and rinsed 8 cups water 1/4 tsp pepper 1 lg onion 2 medium stalks celery, finely chopped 1 ham bone, 2 lbs ham shanks or 2 lbs smoked pork hocks 3 medium carrots, cut into 1/4” slices

1. Heat all ingredients except carrots to boiling in 4-quart Dutch oven, stirring occasionally; reduce heat Cover and simmer 1 hour to 1 hour 30 minutes.

By the way, smoked pork hocks look really gross. Really.

2. Remove ham bone; let stand until cool enough to handle. Remove ham from bone. Remove excess fat from ham; cut ham into 1/2” pieces.

Also, smoked pork hocks have a buttload of fat around them. Smoky, salty (delicious and hard not to stick back in the soup) fat.

3. Stir ham and carrots into soup. Heat to boiling; reduce heat. Cover and simmer about 30 minutes or until carrots are tender and soup is desired consistency.

In the end, it looked an awful lot like my post-Sunday School lunch from days gone by, but it was a little thicker and pastier than I recall. Maybe that means I’d done my French Canadian neighbours proud.

Just to be safe, I didn’t let them taste test.