It is currently autumn in South Africa and with the colder weather creeping up on us, what better way to warm up than with a hearty bowl of soup?
This dish brings so many comforting memories and nostalgia from while I was growing up. The recipe has been passed down in our family for generations, I remember cozy evenings at my gran’s and parents’ house with a big, warm bowl of soup, my siblings and I feasting while snuggling underneath toasty blankets.
The thick and meaty pea soup is a traditional Dutch dish, we grew up knowing it as dikke erwtensoep or snert. It is made so thick that you are able to stand a spoon up right in it. There are many different variations of this recipe, the one I am sharing is how it was passed down to me by my Naaktgeboren family.
Ingredients:
• 500g dried split peas
• 1,5kg pork shanks
• 250g smoked sausage
• 2 carrots
• 1 onion
• 2 ribs celery
• Herb salt
• Garlic salt
• Celery salt
• 2 Cubes beef stock
• Worcester sauce
• Salt and pepper to taste
• 1,75 liters of water
• Served with toasted bread and butter
Instructions:
- In a slow cooker, add the water, split peas, pork shanks, stock cubes, herb- garlic- and celery salt and let it simmer for 2-3 hours.
- Grate the carrots, onion and celery and add to the rest of the ingredients.
- Let the soup simmer for a further 3-4 hours, stirring occasionally, until the meat starts to fall off of the bones.
- Remove the shanks, debone, pull the meat apart and add the meat back into the soup.
- Add Worcester sauce to your taste (this is not a traditional ingredient in the recipe, but I like to use it for extra flavor.)
Keep stirring the soup occasionally for the next 1 – 2 hours, add water if it starts to stick to the bottom or the consistency gets too thick.
After simmering for a total of around 8 hours, the soup should have a fairly smooth, thick consistency.
- Cut the smoked sausage into slices and add to the soup.
Simmer for a further 30 minutes and add salt and pepper to taste.
I like to toast bread with a little bit of olive oil in the air fryer and smear a generous amount of salted butter on it, to serve on the side.
##### Bon appetite! I hope this recipe brings you as much comfort and heart-warming memories as it does to me, reminiscing about my childhood.
Thank you for reading my post, if you would like to join the contest, here is the original post: @zord189/hive-creative-contest-or-soup-or-stewcontest-details.
I'm looking forward to seeing many stew and soup recipes, to warm us up during our cold winter months!
