After almost 10 years of living in the Netherlands, I’ve attempted to make a much-loved winter soup – Erwtensoep or Split Pea Soup. The Dutch loves it, especially during the wintertime and it’s usually to be eaten with dark rye bread (roggebrood) and smoked sausages (gerookte worst). It also keeps well in the freezer, to be consumed on another cold winter day. 🙂
I’m a great fan of Kayotic Kitchen, a Dutch foodblogger and my split pea soup is adapted from her recipe (if you wish for a picture step-by-step, please visit Kay’s recipe).
Ingredients:
- 500g split peas, rinsed
- 1 large carrot, cubed
- 2 onions, roughly cubed
- ½ celeriac root, cubed
- 2 large potatoes, cubed
- 2 leeks, halved lengthwise, roughly chopped
- 1 handful celery leaves, roughly chopped
- 2 pork chops, cut into roughly 2x2cm
- 5 pork ribs, remove all fat
- 120g bacon, chopped
- 1.5 liter water
- 2 bouillon cubes
- salt and pepper, to taste
Preparation:
I cheated a little bit. 😛 I bought a packet of vegetables for making split pea soup and added 2 potatoes and more carrots.
- Prepare a big dutch oven / pot and layer: (i) peas; (ii) meat – cubed pork chops, ribs and bacon; (iii) celeriac root; (iv) carrots; (v) onions; (vi) leeks; (vii) potatoes. Sprinkle all over with celery leaves. Top with bouillon cubes (I used pork bouillon cubes) and then water.
- When the water boils, put the heat to low and put the lid on. Leave it to simmer for about 60-75 mins. Give it a good stir after 75 mins.
This is how it looks like after 75 mins.
- At this point, add some hot water if the soup looks a little dry.
- After another 2.5 hours, check the ribs which should fall off the bones very easily. If it does, remove the bones and return rib meat to the soup.
The soup, then, looks like this.
- Thinly slice a smoked sausage and add to the pot. According to Kay, this is the DUTCH way. 🙂
- Season with salt and pepper, to taste and sprinkle a little more chopped celery leaves on top (which I didn’t coz I didn’t have any more celery leaves).
Delicious, heartwarming..
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