Pea Soup... It's Green!
Friday, March 16, 2012 at 2:00AM | Taneasha 
In the spirit of St. Patrick’s Day, I decided to make something green this week. Now if you’re anything like me, when you hear the words pea soup, you automatically think of split peas. Well, pea soup can be made with fresh peas and it’s a nice, vibrant green with the sweet flavor of fresh peas. I used frozen peas, but with spring on its way, take advantage of the season and use some fresh from the farm or your own garden.
Here’s what you’ll need:
1 lb. of peas, frozen or fresh will work
2 – 2 ½ cups chicken stock
1 medium onion
3 cloves garlic
1 teaspoon cumin
½ teaspoon dried dill
Juice of half a lime
Salt and Pepper to taste
As good as this soup is, it’s even better with homemade croutons, so I’ll show you how to make those first. They’re so easy and delicious, you might never go back to store bought croutons again. Start with some good bread, a baguette or some ciabatta work well.
Cut the bread into bite size pieces.
I had about 4 cups or so of bread cubes. In a large ziplock bag, put 3 tablespoons of olive oil.
Sprinkle in ¼ teaspoon or so each of cumin, garlic powder, salt and pepper. Feel free to change this up with whatever spices you like. Mix the spices into the oil and add the bread cubes.
Seal the bag and shake until everything is pretty evenly coated, then dump them onto a sheet pan.
Place the pan into a 225° oven. If you didn’t preheat, that’s not a big deal this time. Just turn the oven on and put the pan in anyway. You don’t want to cook the bread cubes, we’re just trying to dry them out so they’re crunchy. It took mine about 30 minutes. When they’re crunchy, remove them from the oven and allow them to cool on the pan.
I told you they were easy. Now let’s return to the soup. Dice your onion and put it, with a tablespoon of olive oil, in a saucepan over medium heat.
Sprinkle it with a pinch of salt and stir it around, allowing it to sweat for about five minutes. When the onions are translucent, add the minced garlic.
Cook that, stirring frequently, for another two minutes then sprinkle on the cumin.
Stir and cook that for one minute then add the dill.
And finally, pour in two cups of chicken stock.
Bring that to a boil and simmer for five minutes, then pour in your peas.
As you can see, mine were still frozen. Either way is fine. Bring it back to a boil and cook the peas just long enough to heat them… about two minutes. Turn the heat to low and squeeze in the juice of half a lime.
You could pour it into a food processor or blender at this point, or even eat is as is. I pulled out my new immersion blender and went to town.
Once it’s pureed, it’ll probably be a bit on the thick side.
Stir in enough chicken stock to get the consistency you like. See? It’s green!
Top it with a few of your delicious croutons and enjoy!
What’s your favorite green food?
Colors!, fresh is best in Taneasha, dinner, holiday, one pot meals, soup 
Reader Comments (2)
You know, this soup is another one of the fast and easy weeknight dinners we've been coming up with lately. I'll bet you did the soup part in less than 20 minutes!
Yeah, it was super quick and easy, and if you don't like peas, you could easily replace them with any other green vegetable... broccoli, spinach, asparagus, whatever you like.