Erwtensoep

Ingredients

• Split peas500 g
• Pork ribs500 g
• Pork belly300 g
• Rookworst400 g
• Celeriac300 g
• Leeks2
• Carrots3
• Potatoes400 g
• Onion1
• Celery leaves30 g
• Rye bread — to serve300 g
• Salt and pepperto taste

Salt and spices grow more slowly than the rest: doubling a dish does not double the pepper.

Weight converts to ounces and volume to cups. Grams of flour are not turned into cups, because that depends on how tightly it is packed.

Method

1. 1

   Rinse the peas and cover them, with the ribs and belly, in two and a half litres of cold water.

   10 min

2. 2

   Bring it up, skim and simmer an hour, until the peas start breaking down.

   65 min

3. 3

   Add the potato, carrot, celeriac and onion and cook another hour, stirring so nothing catches.

   65 min

4. 4

   Lift out the meat, strip it from the bones and return it to the soup in pieces.

   15 min

5. 5

   Add the sliced leek and celery leaves and cook twenty minutes.

   22 min

6. 6

   Cool it completely and leave it overnight in the fridge; the soup thickens.

   15 min

7. 7

   Reheat it, add the sliced sausage for five minutes and serve with rye bread.

   15 min

About the dish

Doneness is judged by the spoon: it should stand upright. A thin erwtensoep is called soup in the Netherlands and a thick one snert, and the second is the correct state.

The soup is made the day before and always given a night in the cold. Only on the next day does it thicken properly, and serving it freshly made is not done.

The rookworst is not boiled in the soup but warmed in it at the end. Boiled, it gives all its flavour to the broth and turns bland.

Worth knowing

• — Do not soak the peas. Split peas break down on their own, and soaked ones only collapse before the meat is tender.
• — Stir often, especially in the second hour. The peas settle and catch instantly in anything thinner than cast iron.
• — Salt at the end. The cured meats give up a great deal of salt, and salted early the soup comes out oversalted.

Nutrition

Per serving at the base yield, calculated from the ingredients rather than measured in a lab.

Calories

680 kcal

Protein

40 g

Fat

32 g

Carbs

58 g

More from Netherlands

• Stamppot — Mashed potato crushed together with curly kale, with smoked sausage and a well of gravy.
• Poffertjes — Tiny yeasted pancakes of buckwheat and wheat flour, served with butter and icing sugar.
• Bitterballen — Balls of stiff meat ragout in breadcrumbs, deep-fried and served with mustard.