Red pea soup

And we're still on The VegHog's Cheap Eats Week 2017. Hopefully you are enjoying it and getting tips for cheaper eating. Actually homecooked vegetarian meals are always quite economical, if you have a basic larder of spices and a couple of sauces. Anyhow, I feel good if I can save a bit money sometimes.

Today's recipe is a Finnish style pea soup that requires quite a bit of patience. This particular soup I cooked for about seven hours before serving, so make sure you have a minimum of about four hours to spare. These red fox peas seemed to be a bit more sturdy than regular dried green peas. Many of these red peas stayed intact even after such a long cooking time. The target is to get many peas turn into full mash and become one with the vegetable stock forming a very thick soup. You don't need much of this soup to be full and this definitely is a very cheap soup to make.

Pea soup is traditionally eaten in Finland on Thursdays and on Shrove Tuesday, and it's also often served to the soldiers in the Finnish army.

Red pea soup

Ingredients

300 g dried red fox maple peas

2 large onions

3 garlic cloves

1 tsp vegetable stock extract

1 tbsp ground mustard seeds

Salt to taste

Ground white pepper to taste

Dash of liquid smoke

Sprinkle of smoked paprika

2 tbsp tomato purée

Method

Soak the dried peas overnight. Fill a large saucepan with water and boil the peas there heavily for the first 15 minutes.

Chop the onions and garlic and add the onions and the vegetable stock extract to the saucepan and let simmer under the lid for several hours.

Stir occasionally and add the seasoning towards the end.

Enjoy!

Your VegHog