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Choosing Which Type of Pea Soup to Make
When including pea soup with dinner, plan ahead for the amount needed. If you plan to serve the soup ahead of a main course, along with salad, rolls and dessert, plan on a cup of soup for each person. When soup is the main course, make at least twice that much for each person.
Likewise, a recipe providing four servings is the best one if you are cooking for two. Freeze or refrigerate leftovers for another time. A bit too much is better than too little when it comes to delicious, homemade pea soup.
If your family likes meat with dinner and you have no ham to add to the soup, consider using bacon. It has a salty base and will add great flavor to the split pea soup, whether you are using yellow or green split peas to make the soup. Think outside the box and fry some bacon to serve alongside the bowl of soup with freshly baked biscuits.
Guests and family can crumble the crisp bacon into the soup or make mini-bacon sandwiches using the biscuits. A couple of slices of tomato, 2 leaves of lettuce and a bit of mayonnaise on the side will give each person the opportunity for a bacon biscuit with lettuce and tomato sandwich.
If it is one of those cold winter days where a steaming bowl of thick soup or stew is the perfect thing to serve for dinner, opt for hearty homemade split pea soup that is so much more filling, nutritious, and delicious than canned soup will ever be. You are preparing this for yourself and your family or friends and know exactly what you need to make the soup uniquely special for your bunch.
If you have a cured piece of ham or hambone to add to the soup, that will be just that much more flavor. Be careful with the amount of salt you add, because ham or bacon adds salt to the mix. That is why split pea soup recipes suggest a small amount of salt while cooking. Over-seasoning can affect the quality of any dish.
If you are having chicken for dinner, yellow split pea soup or fresh green pea soup is an excellent choice. When choosing the type of soup for lunch, serve grilled cheese sandwiches with green split pea soup on the side. Likewise, green split pea soup is the perfect choice for an appetizer when roast beef is the main course or you can choose to serve the soup at the same time as the meat.
Let your imagination go wild and make an incredible garnish for the soup. Dish it up in the kitchen and add celery tops, parsley sprigs, shredded carrots or herb croutons. Thick, creamy, or broth-like soups are more appealing with a clever garnish on top or to the side.
It is fun to discover the different types of ingredients used to make types of pea soup. Some recipes cook the peas with mint and others sauté onions and leeks before cooking them with the pea soup.
Deciding which type of pea soup to make involves more than considering whether to use fresh, frozen, or dried peas and whether the soup should be yellow or green. The most important step is picking out a recipe that sounds interesting enough that you want to make it. If this is your first time at making soup, nearly any pea soup recipe is a good choice.
