I have a few things that everyone seems to love (or so they say. I hate having my food judged lol). But I think my best is my homemade pot pie. My husband thinks it is my lasagna, but I am going to say my pot pie.
Well, I thought we'd share our best recipes in this thread, eh? This Split Pea soup is mine. Folks donate hams for me to make it.
Split Pea Soup updated
Filed under: Soup — lenahaugland @ 7:07 am
1969 Betty Crocker’s cookbook Split Pea Soup
(*my variations in parenthesis.)
Easily doubled recipe – it freezes well.
INGREDIENTS
2 cups dried split peas (*one plastic bag is 2 cups).
2 quarts water (*that is 8 cups and I add chicken bouillon
to that 8 cups of water so it is chicken broth. Or just
start out with 8 cups of chicken broth)
1 lb smoked ham shank or ham hocks or 1 ham bone (*I start
with a real bone-in ham. There will be more than enough
ham for your soup, and the leftover extremely tender ham is
wonderful for sandwiches, etc.)
1 medium onion, finely chopped (about 1/2 cup) (*I use a
lot more onion and you don’t need to chop anything so
fine.)
1 cup finely chopped celery (*my celery usually is beyond
usable before I use it, so I normally skip it)
1 sprig parsley (*I use dried parsley)
1/4 teaspoon pepper
2 medium carrots, thinly sliced (*my very original Betty
Crocker recipe didn’t call for carrots – but my notes say I
always added 1-1/2 cup of sliced carrots). They will cook
down.
(* IMPORTANT * my little additions – a bit of chopped garlic in a jar, 1/4 tsp thyme, a bay leaf or two, and a generous pinch of
cayenne pepper.)
DIRECTIONS
In large saucepan or Dutch oven, heat peas and water (*bouillon) to
boiling; boil 2 minutes.
Remove from heat; cover and let stand 1 hour.
Add bone-in ham, onion, celery, parsley and pepper; heat to
boiling. (*add carrots and my additions – chopped garlic in a jar, 1/4 tsp thyme, a bay leaf or two, and a generous pinch of
cayenne pepper.)
Reduce heat; cover and simmer (*at least) 1-1/2 hours.
This is VERY good and I always have requests for it. Sorry the (directions are not strait-forward), but that's my cooking writing style.
Remove ham and bone.
(*If you want a really creamy variation, use a hand blender in the pot before adding the ham back in. Or if you don’t have a hand blender, put the soup through a regular food processor or blender Personally, I like the un-creamy version best.)
Trim meat from bone and add to soup (*if you use a whole ham with bone, save out about 1/2 the ham for other uses.