Dutch recipe
How to make Pea soup
Erwtensoep or snert
All of the Netherlands
A very thick winter soup of green split peas with pork, celeriac, leeks, carrots, onions and often potato, finished with slices of smoked sausage. It is almost a stew, served with dark rye bread and bacon.
Ingredients
- 500 g green split peas, rinsed
- 2 litres water
- 500 g pork ribs or a piece of pork belly
- 1 onion, chopped
- 2 leeks, sliced
- 2 carrots, diced
- Half a small celeriac, peeled and diced
- 2 potatoes, peeled and diced
- 1 smoked sausage (rookworst), about 275 g
- A handful of chopped celery leaves
- Salt and black pepper
- Dark rye bread, to serve
Method
- Put the split peas, water and pork in a large pot, bring to the boil and skim off the foam.
- Cover and simmer gently for about 1 hour, stirring now and then so the peas do not stick.
- Take out the pork. Add the onion, leeks, carrots, celeriac and potatoes and simmer for another 45 minutes to 1 hour, until the peas have fallen apart and the soup is very thick.
- Meanwhile cut the meat from the bones into small pieces. Heat the smoked sausage in hot water as the packet says, then slice it.
- Return the meat to the pot with the sausage and the celery leaves, season with salt and pepper and heat through, stirring well.
- Serve hot with rye bread. The soup is even better the next day, thinned with a little water.
Made it at home? Tick it off and it goes into your kitchen passport.
When canals and lakes freeze, little stalls on the ice sell steaming cups of snert to skaters.
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