Pea soup with bacon is a delicious first course that every housewife should be able to cook. Let's get acquainted with the secrets and tips for cooking this amazing soup!
What peas are suitable for soup?
The opinion that pea soup is cooked only from dried yellow or green peas is fundamentally wrong. Fresh or canned peas are great for cooking soups.
Another question is the quality of this pea itself. It should be only benign, without traces of spoilage, without an extraneous odor and with a characteristic color for its appearance.
Which bacon is better?
The best tastes are boiled-smoked bacon, and not smoked-boiled. This is due to a partial loss of flavor and aromatic compounds during the cooking process.
Replace such bacon or supplement its presence in the soup with the following products:
- smoked pork ribs;
- smoked chicken wings;
- smoked hunting sausages;
- smoked and boiled pork belly.
Cooking secrets
The classic pea soup with smoked bacon is cooked without the addition of potato tubers. This is a kind of rule that many do not know about.
The whole secret in the composition of these two products - peas and potatoes. They contain a lot of starch, and two types of starchy foods are not added to one dish. Thus, it is not recommended to combine such types of components in one dish:
- potatoes or Jerusalem artichoke;
- rice groats;
- peas;
- flour products.
What to do if you really want to put some potatoes in pea soup with bacon? There is an answer! After peeling and washing, cut the potatoes into cubes or cubes and fill with cold water. After a couple of minutes, rinse and fill with a new portion of cool water. Do it again. So the excess starch is washed out of pieces of tubers.
The same is done with thorough washing of dry peas - excess starchiness is removed.
What then remains in the broth? The saturation of the broth and the soup that is prepared on it is achieved by adding a meat product (smoked meat, bone meat, chicken).
Classic recipe
The following ingredients will be required:
- one glass of dried peas (whole or chopped);
- one carrot;
- onion head;
- 2 tbsp. l tomato paste;
- 200 g smoked bacon;
- a sprig of spicy greens (for example, dill or parsley);
- 2-3 tbsp. l vegetable oil;
- 2 liters of meat (or vegetable) broth or filtered water;
- to taste salt and spices.
Now prepare the pea soup with bacon. Step by step recipe:
- First, prepare the peas. Fill it with water in a bowl and wash it very well. We pour muddy water and pour fresh, clean. Leave for a couple of hours. During this time, peas absorb water and swell well.
- After that, we transfer the peas to the pan and pour them with pre-prepared broth or water. Turn on a strong fire on the stove. When foam appears on the surface, remove it. And when the broth boils, we reduce the heat to moderate. Cook with a half-closed lid.
- In bacon, we cut off the skin and rough places, if any. Cut into small cubes.
- We clean all the vegetables for the soup, wash the greens. Then finely chop the carrots and onions into cubes.
- In a pan, heat lean oil and pass on it carrots and onions. Then add the tomato paste and mix. Passage a couple of seconds and remove from heat.
- We introduce bacon, sauté into the boiling broth, cook until the peas are almost completely boiled under low heat and the lid is almost closed.
- Before the end of cooking, salt the soup and add spices or spices to taste. Mix and turn off the heating of the stove.
- Pour a serving of soup into a plate and decorate with a sprig of fresh green dill.
Mistress note
Pea soup with bacon can be cooked in the form of a puree soup. At the same time, slices of bacon are passaged separately and added to a plate with a portion of grated soup.
Enrich the taste of the first dish will help the addition of a small amount of cream, sour cream or milk. These products are introduced upon serving, i.e. right on the plate. It is important that the cream is preheated, the milk is boiled and slightly cooled, and the sour cream is taken at room temperature.
Wheat or rye bread croutons are often used to serve pea soup with bacon. The recipe for such croutons is very simple. Small pieces of bread are mixed with a couple of drops of vegetable oil and baked in the oven until they are rosy in color and crisp. Such croutons are cooked in a pan.
So that the soup does not "run away" when cooking, fill the pan three quarters.
Instead of tomato paste, you can use tomato juice or ketchup.
It is recommended to use spicy greens when cooking fresh - basil, rosemary, thyme. It is more aromatic and gives a better rich taste. But, of course, dried spicy herbs are also allowed.
Any fresh herbs in boiling soup are added at the very end of cooking, when all other products are completely ready. So the green leaves of spicy herbs will not lose their color and enrich the dish with vitamin - ascorbic acid.