Swedish Yellow Pea Soup

I have never made split pea soup before in my life. I always heard of people making this “supposedly” good soup, but I never thought about it. It always seemed too hard. Can you believe that? This is about the easiest soup ever to make.

Michael always told me that split pea soup was one of his favorites, but of course the only time he had it was in a restaurant--- until a couple of weeks ago. My downstairs neighbor had made this soup and brought us up some. It was so delicious!! I asked her how she made it. Her response was to roll back her eyes and laugh. She said, “throw everything in the pot and cook.” I thought, what was everything?

I went to Honey Baked Ham to get a ham hock and bought their split pea soup started. Wrong!!!! It was good, but too salty. So weeks later, I googled this recipe of Swedish Yellow Pea Soup and it was, by far the most delicious, hearty soup I’ve ever made. The yellow peas were a bit “sweeter” to me. DUH---sweeter—pastry chef, makes a lot of sense to me. Anyway, this is delicious and very easy. I did not use a blender because it was the perfect consistency without it.

We had enough left over for 2 more meals. If you have leftovers, you will have to add water to the soup because it get very thick in the refrigerator. This is a recipe that I will make several more times this winter. We just bought a Challah to go with it. So for dinner we had soup, bread and butter. Who could ask for anything more? And of course--holiday cookies for dessert.(I wonder where the 8 pounds came from). I will share the cookie recipe with you tomorrow. Until then, bon appetit.