Eric's Crock Pot Pea Soup Recipe

Crock Pot Pea Soup Recipe Eric: Hi, everyone. We have this idea that in the middle of nowhere there is not really much to do -- man, these guys want these treats. But I want to have a cooking contest, The Gardenfork Cooking Contest, and I want you guys to make a Gardenfork cooking show, make your own cooking video and we’ll put them in Gardenfork and we’ll have a contest and we’ll have a couple of winners and we’ll give away free stuff. Come to the Green House, look in the discussion forums. There will be some information about the contest that will be called Video Contest. But really, it just be great to see people in their homes making videos and I’ll post on the Green House some tips on how I make my videos and how you can make your own as well, alright? So, watch the show, but then come to the Green House and enter the contest. Thanks. Hey, everyone. This is our little friend Moose who is a big troublemaker. Our friend who has Miggy and Moose is gone to England so we are babysitting for about five days. So it is complete chaos here. And Lyn is going to leave and going back to New York and I’m going to stay up here with the dogs. So, I really love Pea Soup. Female: Good luck! Eric: Yeah, good luck, that’s my hand. I like it because it’s simple. It’s freezing outside. It’s a nice a freezing weather dish and it’s like classic Gardenfork thing, alright? Alright, you want to cook? Say yes. (Dog barking). Alright, get up. Go play. The first thing, wash your hands. I get emails about this, “Eric, do you wash your hands after playing with the dogs?” And yes, I do, alright. What I liked about this is we just put all the stuff in here, cook it. So you can set it to cook overnight which is what I’m going to do or you could set up to cook in the morning and come back home and it’s cooked. But one thing that you have to remember when you’re using a crock pot is you probably to add more water than you think you need, which I’ve discovered the other day. You can make a vegetarian version of this dish if you want. It could be a vegan, I think it’s considered. But I like to have a little hand on the dish and classic pea soup is made with a hambone after you had a hand for a holiday meal or something. But a lot of times, you don’t have that laying out. You could use like ham hocks, if they sell them on a butcher near you. What I’ve got the other day was a piece of salt pork like this. Salt pork is usually is pretty fatty but I got one with some nice pieces of meat here in it, nice pieces of ham in it and we’ll cut this up, alright. Okay, so I’m going to cut a majority of the fat off of here. A lot of salt pork is almost pure fat, so you’re going to have to look for the selection and pick one that has some meat on it but I got a lot of the fat off if here. You could also just use sliced ham from the deli or a ham steak with the butcher. So, I’m just going to cut this into cubes, put the other piece or legume, and they’re really healthy for you and a little bit of ham in there is just fine. Female: Are they the same kind of peas? We got in the garden just dried out or if they’re a kind of peas? Eric: No, they are dried peas. So it’s a similar plant but a little different variety. There’s also a fresh pea soup that we’re going to do also -- the English have this, it’s a lettuce and pea soup and we’re going to make that as well. Female: I see, that sounds better to me. Eric: Well, I’ll try to make it a better one. Okay, I want to cut up some carrots here and I don’t peel my carrots. I just brush them with a brush. I think when you peel them, I think you take a lot of the nutritious stuff off of them. So, just cut these into rounds. You also want the main ingredient, piece here. We’re going to take this and rinse them with the colander. This is a good thing when you wet peas, they become rock solid for some reason and they all stick together, maybe some good food scientist can tell us why that is. Okay, so we have our carrots and our ham. You could also have some onion if you like. If you want on the Green House, you can post, I’m going to post this recipe but you can also post your version of pea soup but I’d like to actually see that would be cool. That’s what the site tell about, it’s kind of like everyone talking about what they’re doing. Female: Talking about pea soup. Eric: I’m sorry. No, but it’s neat. It’s like today, where people, I wrote a little thing about different blogs that I get neat recipes from and a bunch of other people replied to that. You know, there’s a little reply thing at the bottom and they listed some other cool blogs that they get recipes from. Now, we’re going to fill our Crock pot with water. Female: How much water? Eric: You know, everyone’s Crock pot is a little different so I’m going to suggest that it be two inches above the level of the food. Female: Are you making that up? Eric: No, I’m not because the last time I did this, that’s what I did and I came out great. Crock pot with the ingredients. It goes in here. Well, that goes on, if you want this to get cook fairly fast like in four hours, I would say put it on high, if you’re going to go away, go to work which is the perfect thing for this, I would say to put it on low. Female: They’re really safe enough to do that? Eric: Oh yeah, that’s a beauty of the Crock pot. It’s a low heat, low power thing and it just chugs way. It’s ceramic, glass and metal so it’s not going to catch on fire and it’s great. We’re going to do some water crock pot stuff on this winter so -- Female: That’s it, we’re done? Eric: No, we’re putting in but sometimes I forgot that part. Female: Does it need salt or anything? That meat need some seasoning, isn’t it? Eric: I would season this after, the salt pork has salt in there already. So I don’t think you need to salt this it off. I usually just put a little crock pepper in here. You can put a bay leaf in here if you like. But actually, I put a couple of bay leaves in but we don’t have any. But on the Green House, you can put if you want. You know, tell me what your recipe is so we can go and we’ll have a posting about this and you can add on the posting and tell us what you think. Alright, so here we are, it’s the next day. Lyn has gone back to the city. The pups are sleeping on the couch thankfully. It is like 12 degrees outside. The wind is blowing but we have some really good pea soup here. This is a -- I can't really tilt it. You can kind of see it there. So, let’s do our taste test here. And this is great and this little bit of pepper, but other than that -- so there you go, simple food, easy to make. You could start this before you go to work, set it on low, let it cook, come back and it’s done. Alright, that’s enough. I talk too much. Thank you. Have a great day. Stay warm.