Split pea and ham soup is delicious and warming. We like in when the weather is cold and wet outside because it warms us up and the aroma makes the whole house smell good and feel warm.
Split pea and ham soup isn’t hard to cook up on the spur of the moment, peas cook pretty fast so why would I can it?
Its because sometimes when the weather is really cold and we have ice on the ground and electric wires…. the power goes out. Its a LOT easier to heat up a jar of homemade soup than it is to actually cook the peas, potatoes and veggies. It takes less power and less time. I can heat up a jar of soup on the outdoor grill or on a kerosene stove.
This recipe makes about 1 gallon of soup. I can it in quarts, you could use pints if you like.
2 – 16 oz package split peas
16 cups water OR chicken broth, OR a combination. I use a combo of homemade broth and water.
2 large onions, diced
2 large potatoes, peeled and diced
6 diced carrots
5 stalks diced celery
1 cup diced Ham cut into 1/4″ pieces
2 or 3 Bay leaves
8 cloves of garlic, minced
2 Teaspoons Salt
2 Teaspoons Pepper
Wash the peas, pick out rocks and discolored peas. Add the peas and all other ingredients to a large stock pot and cook for about 1 hour or til the peas are soft. Stir frequently to prevent scorching.
When the soup is done, remove the bay leaves.
Ladle the hot soup into hot jars. Use a plastic spatula and remove air bubbles. Fill to within 1 inch of the rim of the jar.
Add hot lids and rings.
Process in pressure canner at 10 lbs. of pressure for 90 minutes for quarts and 75 minutes for pints.
Makes 4 quarts or 8 pints, more or less.
Hello and welcome! I'm Sylvia Britton, and I've been online since 1996 offering encouragement and help in the spirit of Titus 2 and Proverbs 31 at Christian Homekeeper. CHK is the original Homekeeping site on the internet
I just found your site when looking for a canned split pea recipe (still somewhat new to canning, only a year into it, but love the convenience of grabbing and heating something on a busy day).
I have a question that you may or may not have an answer to: I can beans without pre-cooking them, just a soak over night, do you know if there is a way to can split pea soup without having to cook it first, since it spends 75-90 minutes in the pressure canner? I am trying to add recipes to my stash that do not require a lot of pre-work for those times when I have room left in the canner and I pretty much always have the ingredients for this on hand.
I may have to just try this one of these days and see what happens but if I can garner some input first from more experienced canners that would be fantastic.
Thank you in advance,
B.
Thanks for stopping by B and for your questions, its a good one!
My inclination is to say that you don’t have to precook the peas and veggies. In fact I know you don’t have to precook the veggies, I often put them in RAW in the soup after the peas have cooked and right before I can it.
The trick would be knowing just how much water/broth and beans to add to each jar. I don’t know how much of either. That would be the problem because if you get it too thick, you’ll likely have a mass of uncooked and un-sterilized peas in the center of the jar. That would be a big problem and unsafe to eat.
I do can dry pintos, great northern and navy beans. I often add a piece of ham to each jar. Peas seem different though they don’t swell as much as they get soft and break apart. But I know how much beans and how much water to add to each quart.
So I am thinking that NO you probably don’t want to do that with dried green peas, but you don’t have to allow the peas and ham to cook for an hour, just long enough for the peas to soften and start to fall apart.
It definitely needs some experimentation! That could be a good project for me this summer.
Thank you for your response. I’m thinking that there will have to be some experimenting here at Casa Pinch, too. I foresee some trials involving dehydrated veggies and some with fresh veggies. I won’t promise that I’ll update here, but if I have a result that is relevant I’ll try to remember to put a note here to let you know. Thank you again for your help and encouragement. It can be a bit intimidating to be a new homesteader and learning these things from books without any hands on instructions.
Back to lurking 😀
Let me extend a warm invitation to the CHK FaceBook group. If you are using FB, it can be a great way to learn about homesteading and homemaking from around 400 ladies, many who have lived it out.
http://www.facebook.com/groups/christianhomekeeper
Thank you for the invite. However, I cannot get into the site with that link. Is the group closed or am I just a doofus?
Try it now…… I had a dot where there should have been a slash!
haha, nevermind, I just called my mom who explained it all to me…LOL
Hi,
I’m not a big canner but starting now I would like to do a lot of canning (soups in fall/winter, veggies in summer)…I have a large canner but it’s not pressureized so not sure what you mean when you say “10 lbs pressure”? Can I just cook in my regular canner or do I need something pressurized?
Thank You for any help, Kelly
Glad you found out, Kelly. For anyone else who may be reading here: You need a pressure canner to can this soup.
I only had one bag of split peas, so I used one bag of split peas and one bag of lentils and it came out delicious! Thanks for the great recipe.
Sounds great Amy! I’m glad you tried it and it was to your liking. 😀
I tripled the recipe and got way more than 12 quarts of out it. What I didn’t andticapate was the jelly like substance floating on the top, I tried to get as much off the top as possible. But at the end it was the best pea soup I ever tasted and my wife and other family members agreed with me. Very good recipe highly suggested.
Glad you liked it, Don! You’re right the amount can vary largely depending on how big your vegetables are and how much liquid you add. I am not sure about the jelly like substance you mentioned unless it was just protein that sometimes cooks out of meat and beans and comes to the top. Its a keeper here too!
I just made a big pot of white beans and ham and I think I’ll can some tomorrow! After raising 7 kids, I still don’t know how to cook for two! Canning some soup will keep us from having to eat it for a week 🙂
In general, according to the Ball Blue Book of canning, soups without meat or meat broth should be canned at 10 pounds pressure for 75 minutes for quarts, pints 60 minutes.
Well, I want to include the chicken stock, so I’ll go with the longer time. Thanks so much for the recipe and the info! 🙂
You’re welcome! 🙂
Thanks Sylvia!! The recipe is almost like the one I make, but haven’t attempted to can – yet! Would leaving out the ham shorten the canning time?
Thanks much!
Audrey