split pea (plural split peas) noun
dried pea used in soup: a pea that has been shelled, dried, and split in half, used especially in soup
Why would you bother to split peas? Aren’t they the smallest objects in the soup, and thus the first to cook anyway?
Peas are dicots in which the bulk of the starch reserves for the growing seedling are stored in the cotyledons themselves, rather in a separate endosperm. Since there are two cotyledons, the seed comes in two halves.
When you dry peas, sort them, clean them, and pack them into bags, the rough handling will split many of the seeds naturally. With just a little extra rough handling, seed packers can deliver a uniform (split) product with a higher packing density than unsplit peas.
It’s not just packing density – split peas cook faster.
Whole peas generally need a presoak.
Sorry, missed that. Answer: No. Learned that the hard way.
You’d be surprised at what a difference it makes. I remember substituting whole peas for split in the world’s most easy-peasy split pea soup recipe once. Instead of having a nice savory soup in a couple of hours, the peas seemingly never lost their crunch, after an absurd amount of time spent stirring and simmering. I think a big part of the problem was that the broth quickly thickened from all the carrots, onions, and peas that were cooked, so much that it wouldn’t easily penetrate the remaining whole peas. I’d keep adding water but it would quickly thicken up again with little change in the amount of toothy peas in there.
Eventually I just gave up and pureed the whole lot of it in several goes in the blender, then cooked it a while longer. Hell of a mess, and way too much trouble for a pot of pea soup, which you should be able to make with your eyes closed.
Same reason woodchucks chuck wood.
That’s one trick I’ll leave to Emeril 