Split Pea Soup with Ham Bone

If you have a bone from a leftover ham—and who wouldn’t?—use it to make this delicious traditional American Split Pea Soup.

A bowl of Split Pea Soup made with ham scraps and the hambone

Split Pea Soup with Ham Bone
Variations or curlicues are many: with the addition of a 1/4 cup tomato paste or 1 cup chopped fresh or canned tomatoes; cooked with a couple of mild chiles, stemmed and seeded; additional fine chopped vegetables (celery, potato, turnip, beans, kohlrabi, celeriac); substituting some of the peas with bulghur wheat or pearl barley; chopped fresh greens such as collard or kale added toward the end; croutons atop. Makes 8 or more cups.

Ingredients
1 1-pound package dried split green peas
1-2 tablespoons bacon fat, duck fat or extra virgin olive oil
1 medium-to-large yellow onion, peeled and small diced
2 medium-to-large cloves garlic, peeled, smashed and minced
2 medium-to-large carrots, peeled and cut on the bias about 3/4-inch thick
1 leftover bone and its meat from a traditional bone-in ham
3 6-inch sprigs fresh thyme, left intact
7 cups of water (or low-sodium broth)
Sea or kosher salt, to taste
Freshly ground black pepper

Directions
Rinse the split peas in 2 changes of water and drain. Add the fat or oil to a large pot or Dutch oven, over medium-high heat, and cook the onions until translucent, about 8-10 minutes, and add the garlic halfway through to avoid burning it.

Add the carrots, peas, bone, water (or broth) and thyme sprigs and cook, stirring occasionally, for up to 1 hour or until the peas are cooked to your liking (you may prefer a few of them still “al dente”). Remove the bone and correct for salt, adding much ground pepper. Remove the woody stems of thyme (the leaves will have fallen away into and seasoned the soup).

Mash half of the mixture with a potato masher or the flat of a wooden spatula and heat through before serving, perhaps garnished with chopped flat-leaf parsley and a swirl of extra virgin olive oil.