Split Pea Chicken Soup

I would like to crown myself a queen of soups. Eastern Europeans like me don’t survive long without soups and rightfully so. Soups are great for diets and are easy to make with whatever ingredients you have at home. I tried Nutrisystem and they definitely include a lot of soups too. In my opinion soups can be consumed at almost unlimited quantity, if they are clear of course – you wouldn’t want to eat too much of creamy potato soup while on diet.

My favorite soup of all is pea soup, split or not split doesn’t make much difference. Yellow whole peas take very long to cook, so that’s why I use organic green split peas for my recipe. This soup takes about an hour to make, is not complicated at all, and feeds my family for two days. Kids are never crazy about soup, but then my kids are never crazy about any foods, unless it’s yogurt or cheese.

Ingredients:

• 1-2 pounds of organic chicken wings and drums (I use about 5 drums and 5 wings)
• ¼ organic onion
• 3 organic carrots
• 3 bay leaves
• Seasoning of choice
• 2 mall organic tomatoes
• 5-7 table spoons of organic lentils
• 5-7 spoons of organic pearled barley
• ½ package of organic green split peas
• 3 medium potatoes
• 2 table spoons of olive oil or butter

To start, wash your chicken and place all the pieces on the bottom of a large pot.

Fill it with water and put on high heat. While your water and chicken are reaching boiling temperature, take a medium frying pan, add oil or butter and heat it up.

Meanwhile chop ¼ of onion and peel and grate carrots.

Place carrots and onion on the pan, reduce heat, and cook until tender. Don’t forget to stir it from time to time.

By now your chicken should be boiling and foaming.

Reduce the heat and skim the surface with a spoon to remove the white foam. Add seasoning and bay leaves.

I like universal seasoning mix, because it has dried veggies and salt already, but you can just use salt and pepper. After you remove the foam, let the pot with chicken simmer for a good 20-30 minutes.

Once carrots and onions are done, turn off the heat and pour them into the soup pot with chicken, stir.

Next step is to add your lentils, pearled barley, and split green peas.

I add all of that together, because all these legumes take about the same time to cook – 30 minutes. Add chopped tomatoes there too.

While everything is simmering together, I peel and cube my potatoes.

I add them when I taste the soup and determine that everything is about 10 minutes away from finishing cooking. Small cubes of potatoes will cook fully in 10 minutes.

Taste your soup and all ingredients before turning the pot off. If all is good and tender, turn off the heat and add dried, fresh, or frozen dill or parsley for looks and smell.

Voila! You are done! I like to serve this soup with about half a spoon of sour cream and bread of choice for kids. My dietary needs don’t include bread, but I do add just a little bit of sour cream. If you like your soups more sour, you can squeeze some lemon juice at the end of cooking. In know that some people discard the chicken, but we love this tender meat that is falling off the bone and eat it on the side with soup. You can also remove the meat, cut it up and add it back to the soup before serving.

The soup will be clear and colorful right after cooking. Next day it might be thicker and cloudy, but sometimes that tastes even better.

Enjoy!