Double Pea & Ham Soup
An Original Recipe by Lorraine Elliott
Preparation time: 20 minutes
Cooking time: 1 hour (with pressure cooker)
- 2 large onions, peeled and diced
- 1 carrot, diced
- 5 garlic cloves, peeled and diced
- 50g/1.7ozs. butter or 2-3 tablespoons oil
- 250g/8.8ozs. green split peas
- 1 ham hock (I try to get the smallest one that will fit into my pressure cooker)*
- 2 bay leaves
- 6 cups chicken stock
- 5 cups frozen peas
- Salt and black pepper for seasoning
You can also replace the ham hock with 300g/10.6ozs of diced ham
Step 1 - Set your pressure cooker onto the sauté setting for 10 minutes and add butter or oil. Cook onions, carrot and garlic until fragrant and starting to caramelise (around 8-10 minutes). If your pressure cooker doesn't have one of these setting sauté in a large pot on medium heat.
Step 2 - Add the split peas, pork hock, bay leaves and chicken stock and turn on medium pressure and cook for 50 minutes. If you're doing this on the stovetop, cook the above ingredients for 3 hours or until ham is soft enough to pull away from the bone easily.
Step 3 - Release the pressure in the pressure cooker and open up the pressure cooker. Add the peas and then allow them to cook in the residual heat (it won't take long as the soup is so hot). Remove the bone from the soup and discard fat. You can puree the soup to make it smoother or keep it with the texture depending on your mood and the moon. Remove the meat from the bone and chop it up into small chunks. Ladle soup into bowls and divide the ham among the bowls. Season with salt and pepper.