Pea and Ham Soup

A white bowl with green pea and ham soup topped with bits of ham and spring onions.

Ingredients

  • 300g peas, frozen are perfect.
  • 1 carrot.
  • 1 onion.
  • 1/2 leek.
  • 2 sticks of celery.
  • 4 cloves of garlic, crushed.
  • 1.5 litres of ham stock, a good quality cube works for this.
  • 2 bay leaves.
  • 6 slices of cured ham.
  • 2 spring onions, chopped.
  • 20g quality oil.
  • Seasoning.

Method

  1. Your first job is to prepare the vegetables. Wash and peel all the vegetables, then finely chop the onion, celery, leek and carrot. Don’t worry too much about the size as it’s going to get blended. 
  2. In a large, thick-bottomed pan add the oil. Once you have a little heat, add the chopped vegetables. Cook down the vegetables without achieving colour. We are trying to extract as much flavour as we can from the vegetables as this is going to form the base of the soup.
  3. Once the vegetables are soft put in half the cured ham and the garlic, mix in with the vegetables.
  4.  Next, add the stock and the bay leaves, and bring to the boil.
  5.  The last thing is to add is the frozen peas. Once you’ve added the peas bring the soup to the boil, then blend until smooth.
  6.  To finish, top with some chopped spring onion and shredded cured ham.