"Turtle" (Split Pea) Soup
When I was a child, I was obsessed with the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. My favorite was Michelangelo (woo! nun-chuks!). While my TV time was limited, I would sometimes sneak down into the basement where we kept the large CRT TV our grandparents had gifted us when they upgraded their TV, and flip through the several channels until I found Mikey and friends.
I suppose the idea of a band of outcasts fighting for what was right and good in the world appealed to me. Plus, nun-chuks. In spite of this, one of my favorite meals growing up was something we called “turtle soup,” a meal much more apt for Shredder and the villains of that series. As it is generally inadvisable to eat the turtles found where I grew up, this soup did not actually contain any turtle – our appellation for it came from the green color, as it was actually a split pea soup.
Soups made with dried peas have a long history, one which Jamie Schler covers quite extensively if you are interested. Running across Jamie’s post brought back memories of “turtle soup” back in the spring, and I made a sizeable batch, mostly following that recipe though I swapped out some spices and such for what I had available in my kitchen. As the mercury drops moving into fall and winter in the northern hemisphere, I am once again drawn to soups, and still had a bag of split peas in my cabinet. I also had spicy, smoked sausage, and pork belly in the freezer, so I decided to work on my own recipe for “turtle soup.”
Ingredients
| Ingredient | mass (g) |
|---|---|
| Split peas | 500 |
| Pork belly | 260 |
| Smoked sausage | 180 |
| Red onion | 180 |
| Salt | to taste |
| Black pepper | to taste |
| Bay leaves | 2-4pc |
| Thyme | to taste |
| Sage | to taste |
| Cumin | to taste |
| Stock | to cover |
Five-hundred grams of split peas is about as much as I can squeeze into the largest pot I regularly use, and I wanted to make a good-sized batch to get me through a week or so and maybe have extra to give to friends or freeze. Everything else is just portioned by how much of what I had available I wanted to use in this soup. The sausage is a ghost pepper-cheese link, I had two left I’d picked up in Louisiana a while back - one has gone into the soup, the other will be a snack this week. You could use yellow onion for a milder flavor, and you could use more of either type of onion, honestly - the 180g I had was just a little less than a quarter of an onion, and what I had left in my fridge. Three or four bay leaves are a good amount here if using dry. If you have access to fresh bay leaves, you may be able to use less. I used a mix of Better Than Bouillon veggie and sofrito paste with water as stock.
Recipe
Soak peas overnight, or do a “quick soak”, then drain and set aside.
- Quick soak method: bring to a boil in heavily-salted water, then let sit, ideally for about an hour. Drain before using, to avoid oversalting the soup.
I did a quick soak - this is based on the method for quick-soaking beans, and seems to work well here. Though, you could also probably just extend the cooking time some and get a similar result.
Coarsely chop the onion, and saute until translucent in a small amount of olive oil.
Slice the meat: the pork belly should be 1-1.5cm thick slices cut so that you have a nice crosssection of meat, fat, and skin. Sausage should be cut into similarly-thick rounds (half- or quarter-rounds if the sausage is especially large).
Brown the meat with the now-translucent onions. You may want to add some black pepper to bloom at this point.
I cannot recommend blooming spices like pepper enough.
Deglaze from browning meat and onion, and add all to drained peas. Add spices (you may not need more salt if you quick-soaked the peas), and cover with stock (a little head), and then bring to a boil.
Due to pan sizes I had handy, I browned the meat and onions in a cast iron skillet and transferred to the pot to cook with the peas. If you have a large enough pot, you could brown meat and onion in that, and then add the peas to it.
Reduce to simmer, uncovered, adding stock or water if needed for an hour or two, until peas and meat are as tender as desired.
I like a thick soup and very tender meat, so I simmered this for just over 2 hours. If you like your meat to have more “bite”, or a thinner soup, you can cut that down.
Optionally, you can remove meat and blitz the veggies with a food processor or immersion blender for a smoother soup.
