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Soup is one of the best things about winter. I love soup. A split pea one is going on my prexmas list.

As a vegetarian, I just added a little olive oil in place of the ham to get the richness.

Smoked Chipolte peppers will add the smoky flavor without adding too much heat.

mmmm, one of my all time favorites. Once upon a time I was vegan, and added 5-10 cardamon seeds to achieve something akin to smokey depth in the soup's flavor in place of meat or faux-meat products.

I made a pot of this soup last night to have for lunch this week.

http://thekitchensinkrecipes.com/2009/11/23/the-regular/

Delicious.

You can shred the carrots and they just dissolve into the soup. Hubby just finished my weekend batch of split pea soup and I had the white bean soup. With all this rain, it's the only thing we want to eat.

I also home can split pea soup - I can have that comfort food whenever I want. If I am cooking this soup, it pays to do one step more and can it per the Ball Blue Book.

I've been craving this soup for the last couple of weeks now but keep forgetting to buy split peas at the grocery store.

Two words: crock pot.

Dumping dried peas, onion, garlic and carrots into the crock with chicken stock salt and pepper in the morning and finding soup coming home wet, cold and hungry that night? Priceless.

Or add smoked paprika - smokiness without the heat.

I think there was a post that referred to it as vegetarian bacon!

I wanted to share a different version of split pea soup. This one is the one my mom makes: it's more of a soup consistency with potatoes and carrrots added. Great to be served with croutons.

My favorite pea soup is from The New Laurel's Kitchen (recipe: Hearty Pea Soup p.167) - it sounds a lot like orchidgirl's version above in that it has potatoes & carrots... but this recipe adds some barley too. And, the peas don't break down as much. I make this every winter.

Fatguy, that was a fantastic suggestion -- I made this with the chipotle addition and it's just perfect. Thanks for the ideas!

I keep a bottle of liquid smoke in the fridge for just this reason! Is also great added to a pot of black eyed peas!

I made this soup last night. I've never made split pea soup before, and I've only had it once before, but it sounded SO good...

And Oh, My God. It was delicious, and super easy. This is definitely going into regular rotation until it warms up again.

My batch is simmering on the stove just about ready to meet my bowl and a slice of multigrain bread.
I chopped up a bunch of leftover ham we had and added it to the soup instead of a ham bone. smells so good.
Easy. thanks for the inspiration

I use the pimenton (Spanish smoked paprika) trick as well when making split pea soup! Mmmmm.

I attempted to make this soup last night, but I ran into some trouble. For some reason my peas never softened fully...I let them simmer way longer than the hour and a half the recipe calls for, but the soup still never achieved a creamy consistency. I finally took the immersion blender to it and that helped, but it was still thin (I think because the peas did not absorb as much liquid as they should have).

Any thoughts on why this would happen or how to avoid it next time?