French Canadian Split Pea Soup - Slow Cooker Thursday

Thursday already? Oh me, oh my these weeks are just flying by.  This week on Slow Cooker Thursday I am sharing a recipe that we see some potential in…but just needs some tweaks from our first go.  Before I get into this week’s recipe post, I wanted to let you know that I would love for YOU to share YOUR slow cooker recipes with me! (pretty please?!).  After the recipe is a LINK PARTY for you to post your slow cooker recipes!  I’ll keep the party up for the month of November, hopefully we can get quite the little collection of recipes (which will TOTALLY help me with my Slow Cooker Thursday routine!)

Now, onto this week’s recipe.  This week I selected French Canadian Split Pea Soup from my Canada’s Best Slow Cooker Recipes cookbook by Donna-Marie Pye.  There are tones of great recipes in this cookbook, and split pea soup caught my eye.  I’ve made a split pea soup before, which was really tasty, but I’m always up for trying new variations.  This recipe called for yellow split peas (not really sure the difference other than colour) – and since it was already formulated for my slow cooker…it was an obvious choice for this week.  Here is the recipe that I used:

1 lb yellow split peas

Ham bone, with some ham still on it

3 carrots, peeled and diced

1 large potato, peeled and cut into small pieces

1 stalk celery, diced

1 bay leaf

1/4 teaspoon thyme

1/4 teaspoon basil

1/4 teaspoon oregano

Salt to taste

Pepper to taste

 

Peas must be prepared prior to assembling the soup.  There are two ways that you can do this:

a) Put the peas in a large bowl and fill the bowl with water.  Make sure all the peas are covered by water.  Allow the peas to soak for at least 12 hours.  Note - I left mine to soak for 24 and had to add more water. 

or b) Put the peas into a large pot, fill the pot with water.  Bring the water to a boil, remove from the heat and let the pot of peas stand for at least one hour. Note - I would probably try this method next time.

 

After soaking, rinse the peas well.  Put the peas into your slow cooker.  Add 7 cups of water, the ham bone, carrots, potato, celery, bay leaf, thyme, basil and oregano.

 

Cover and cook on low for 10-12 hours or on high for 6-8 hours. Soup is ready when it is thick and bubbling.

 

When the soup gets to this point, remove the ham bone (carefully so that you don't burn yourself), pick the meat off of the bone, cut into bite sized pieces and add back into the soup.

 

Remove the bay leaf.

 

Taste...season with salt and pepper as needed...and serve!

 

VERDICT:

While the soup itself had a really nice flavour, we felt that it needed a bit of tweaking.  It my notes above I mention that I would try the cooking method next time to prepare the peas for the soup.  We also thought it needed more ham, which is easy to plan for next time.  And less peas.  We decided that while we love peas, we don't love THAT many peas in our pea soup :-)  All about personal preference!

 

Now...it's YOUR TURN to share some of your FAVOURITE slow cooker recipes!