Split Pea Soup: Pictures are deceiving

I have a love hate relationship with my crockpot. I love the fact that I can plop everything into my crockpot, and leave it on for 4-8 hours. I hate the fact that every recipe I've made in the crockpot is hit or miss. This split pea soup recipe falls into my "love" relationship. I love my soup hearty, I love extra carrots in my soup and I love when soup tastes creamy but doesn't have any dairy.

Another love hate relationship I have is photographing split pea soup. The contrast between the burgundy crockpot and the muted green soup did not result well in pictures, in addition we finished the soup too late to realize we were lacking pictures of the finished product. But please trust me, this soup makes you want to melt it tastes so good.

*If you don't have a crockpot, the stovetop recipe is below the crockpot recipe.

SPLIT PEA SOUP

1 smoked ham hock (Andronico's had a great selection of meaty smoked ham hocks that other stores lacked, you might have to search around for a good one)

2 carrots sliced

½ white onion chopped

1 clove of garlic smashed

1 stick of celery sliced

1 leek

1 tbs salt

3 small Yukon Gold Potatoes

1.5 cup dried split peas

3 cups of water

Wash and cut carrots, onions, garlic, celery and leek. Put skillet on medium heat. Drizzle some olive oil on the skillet, when it swirls around the pan easily; add the leeks, garlic and onions, sauté until limp (5-10 minutes). Add the carrots and celery to the pan, sauté for another 5 minutes until fragrant.

Next, chop up your potatoes; these will get put into the crock pot raw.

Rinse out the split peas and remove anything that doesn’t look green (sometimes small hard stones are in the dried peas).

Take out your crock pot and put all of the ingredients in (in case you need a reminder plop in the ham hock, all of the sautéed leeks, garlic, onions, carrots and celery, rinsed split peas, potatoes, salt and water.

Turn on low and cook all day until you get home. If you don't mind your soup chunky just stir it up and eat it. If you are patient enough, use an immersion blender to puree the soup. We ate this soup so quickly, I didn't even get a chance to take a picture!

**If you don’t have a crockpot you’ll want to start this dinner the night prior, it will take 20 minutes to prep and 2 hours to cook. So let’s rewind to the point at which I asked you to plop everything into your crockpot and instead, take out your large soup pot, sauté all of the vegetables in the pot until the onions are translucent. Add your potatoes and rinsed split peas, salt and ham hock and then drown it all in 4 cups of water. Bring the soup to a boil and then bring down to a simmer and cook for 2 hours.