Friday 9 September 2011

Easy Peasy!

I love a deal.  Gimmie something on sale and I gotta have it!  I mean, you're saving right?  So when I have time to stroll through the supermarket I love to scour the shelves for reduced items.  About 2 weeks ago I came across this:


Pork shank for £2.10.  Not too bad.  But lo and behold, it was reduced to this :


49p!  Bargain!  I took this baby home and stuck it in the freezer ready to be used another day.  Well, Wednesday was that day.  The weather has been cold and rainy (I know, shocker right?!) and I thought pea and ham soup was just the thing we needed.

I defrosted the ham overnight in the fridge and at the same time soaked 2 boxes of marrowfat peas.  It was cheaper for these at 33p a box, than a big bag of them.  Although yesterday while I was out I found them for 29p a box.  Dang!


After everything was soaked and defrosted I placed the peas in my slow cooker, sweat a large onion and added that to pot, gave the ham a quick soak and a rinse (normally the ham should be soaked for a few hours or overnight but I forgot this step and luckily the soup didn't come out very salty) and covered everything with water.  I added some pepper but no salt as the ham would be salty enough.  I put the cooker on high for about 4 hours but this could be done on low either overnight or during the day while you're at work or something.

Not so pretty to look at but really tasty!


At about the four hour mark I took the ham out and let the peas continue to cook.  I took off as much of the ham as I could, chopped the meat into chunks and before returning it all the pot I gave the peas a bit of a  liquidising (if you're using a blender allow the soup to cool, blend, and then return the meat).  I then turned it off and let it cool overnight.  It was still slightly warm by morning.  As it had settled there was liquid and fat along the top so I skimmed that off, gave it a stir and tasted my creation.  Surprisingly it needed salt!  I added a little, gave it another taste and perfecto.  So last night we had pea and ham soup and grilled cheese sandwiches for dinner.  Delicious!  And the best part - so cheap!  In total with the onion (I'm not counting salt and pepper here) the soup cost about £1.35 and there were at least 6 servings. That's 22p a serving!  Bargoon!  

Soup for lunch, me thinks!

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