The weather turned my whole property into bean soup. Had to move two cars to the rock patch and abandon the Jeep all-together, sorry dogs! No running for you for the foreseeable future.
Hoping for a freeze. The only way I can move on this shit-slick. Sometimes, well often (fuck it, always!) it sucks to live where I do.
Not in keeping with the thread, I see. Unless I talk about Mud Soup…
I plan to make a yellow split pea and lemon soup recipe in one of my cookbooks. I made it a while back and I’ve been craving it again. I need to find the cookbook with it again but it was a basic pea soup with no ham and the addition of lemon. You’d think you’d miss the smokiness of the ham but the lemon makes up for it. It was delicious.
I just read a veterinary related article that Tularemia was making a comeback in Wyoming, North Dakota and a few cases in Nebraska and Colorado. So be careful around rabbits if you live around there.
I made mine Saturday night. Nothing goes into mine except great northern beans a ham bone with plenty of attached or cut up ham (picnic shoulders work nicely, too) and lots of pepper. For serving, I add a very healthy dose of vinegar. Kind of like hot & sour bean soup.
This post inspired me to make some for myself tonight. It’s simmering away on the stove: barley, pinto, carrot, parsnip, celery root, garlic, ham hock, smoked sausage. It’s been awhile since I’ve had barley, and I’ve never had this particular soup before. Smells great!
Lean ham is always better than that damn flavor packet, which as far as I can determine, contains enough salt and MSG to give a normal human a volcanic stroke on the spot.
<snippity doo da>
Well, I bet you can guess what 4 states I’ll never visit—ever!
F***in’ rabbits have got to go. I’ve got a couple box traps and a supply of carrots…and I’m not afraid to use them!
I certainly hope you do NOT “use” SUGAR in your cornbread. That is heresy. :rolleyes:
Right. Use molasses. And use corn oil to really bring out the flavor.
It’s pushing 90 here in Orlando(ish), so my crockpot split pea soup will have to wait a bit.
The thing I learned from the Publix dried split pea bag (All Bless Publix) was DO NOT STIR THE SOUP until you’re ready to serve.
Yes, it will look watery and weak, with no clue of the creaminess that is to come. But if you jump the gun you get split pea concrete.
Let it simmer. Be patient. Let the fragrance of the garlic and onions and carrots and kielbasa waft through the kitchen. Slice up that loaf of crusty white bread, slather the butter, then stir.
It’s like magic.
Back when I lived in a place where ham hocks were hard to find, I used packaged smoked sausage, which worked fine except for all the fat. The hocks here are wonderfully meaty, with most of that heavy fat rind cut off.
The Ms makes the cornbread. She used Bob’s Red Mill cornbread mix this time and added a few jalapenos to the mix. I like butter and honey on mine. No idea if any sugar was involved in the making.
Cornbread should contain
Indian Head white cornmeal
baking soda
cream of tartar
salt
buttermilk
an egg.
I add black and red pepper to mine.
But NO sugar, and NO wheat flour.
And the documentation for the soup comes from an archeological dig in the Hallstat salt mine, they found and analyzed food remains to see what they were eating. [page 10 of thisPDF, in German]
I agree, that packet is pure evil. I like smoked pork neckbones [wrap them in cooking gauze and treat like a teabag if I dont want to be fishing little bits out later] or the bone out of a leg of ham. Trying different sausages is also good - keilbasa is surprisingly good in ricet.
Thanks! The ricet turned out wonderfully–homey, hearty, bellywarming, and pure in flavor. I added a little bit of vinegar to it at serving as I like to do with a lot of bean dishes to give it a little bit of “sparkle,” but it’s a great fall dish. Thanks.
ETA: I agree about those flavoring packets. I have no issues with MSG and, in fact, add a little bit of it to many dishes that I make. But that powdered bouillon flavor of any sort of those packets is just too sharp for me and just tastes “wrong.” I like a gentle, subtle, smoky backbone to my bean soups, and those flavor packets just overpower it and all I taste is cheap bouillon. I will occasionally use bouillon cubes and packets judiciously to “amp up” flavors a bit, but not so much that they draw attention to themselves, and for something like this where the delicate flavors of barley and beans need to come through, I wouldn’t add any at all.
Glad it turned out =)
And try a dab of vegemite instead of bouillon cubes or packets - I think you can still buy single catsup packet type packets of vegemite over on minimus.biz.
This week’s soup: Chicken, Yam and Peanut Stew (variation on African peanut stew).
I like the African Peanut Soup at Colophon Café in Fairhaven (Bellingham). I bookmarked their recipe page years ago, but it’s gone now. Fortunately, I copied a copy of the recipe someone posted online and bookmarked that last year. That page is gone now, too. Next time, I’m going to copy the recipe into a Word document!
EDIT: Oh, wait. I did! 
The Original African Peanut Soup
This often-copied-never-duplicated recipe was created in the fall of 1985 to compliment the movie playing across the street “Out of Africa”. The ginger root, chilis, and garlic give it a distinctive, spicy taste which some people call “addictive”. This recipe has appeared in other cookbooks, including the Colophon’s Best Recipes.
Blend in food processor to create soup base:
1 oz Fresh Ginger Root, scrubbed and diced
2 Cloves Garlic
1 tsp Crushed Chili Peppers
3 1/4 cups Diced Tomatoes, canned or fresh
1 3/4 cups Dry Roasted Unsalted Peanuts
1 small Onion, chopped
Place soup base in Pot, Add the following. Cook to 165 degrees:
1 1/2 cup Chicken Stock
3 cups Water
Add to thicken:
1/4 cup Melted Butter
1/4 cup Flour
Finally Add:
2 cups Diced Tomatoes, canned or fresh
1/2 lb Cooked and cubed Turkey or Chicken
Hints: Whisk warm Roux into soup and simmer to thicken. Add final tomatoes to thin and add chunkiness to soup. Thin with water to desired consistency. (For vegetarian version, leave out the turkey and use vegetable stock instead of chicken stock. Garnish with Peanuts. Serves 6-8 people.
.
That has a lot of the same ingredients as ours, but instead of making a roux, we use peanut butter. I’ll post the recipe tomorrow.
Cornbread? Bean soup should be eaten with biscuits and honey.
Ewww 
Bean soup should be served either with cracklin’ corn bread baked in an iron skillet, or at least warm crusty Tuscan, Italian or sourdough bread.
Biscuits (with or without honey) should be served with everything else, especially fried chicken, mashed potatoes & gravy and collard/mustard/turnip greens (pressure cooked with smoked ham hocks and lots of hot sauce). And, they better be southern-style cat-head biscuits with real butter. So what if it precipitates an attack of angina, it’s worth it!
Where did you get it?