Green pea soup
Fifteen minutes from frozen peas, and it tastes considerably better than that sounds.
- 180
- kcal
- 10g
- protein
- 6g
- fat
- 22g
- carbs
- Prep
- 5 min
- Cook
- 15 min
- Serves
- 4
Photograph by Change C.C on Pexels
Ingredients
- 1 lb frozen peas
- 1 onion, diced
- 1 tbsp butter or olive oil
- 3 cups vegetable stock
- Zest and juice of half a lemon
- A handful of mint leaves
Method
-
1
Soften the onion in the butter over low heat for 8 minutes without coloring it.
-
2
Add the stock and bring to a boil.
-
3
Add the peas and cook for exactly 3 minutes. Longer turns them grey.
-
4
Blend with the mint and lemon zest until smooth, then add lemon juice to taste.
Three minutes, and not four
Frozen peas are blanched before freezing, so they are already cooked. Everything you do to them after that is damage. Three minutes brings them to temperature; much beyond that and the chlorophyll degrades, the bright green turns olive, and the sweetness flattens into something closer to tinned.
This is why frozen peas beat fresh here, which surprises people. Peas start converting sugar to starch the moment they are picked, and supermarket "fresh" peas are usually days old. Frozen ones were processed within hours.
The lemon is structural
Pea soup without acid tastes flat and slightly cloying, and no amount of salt fixes it. The zest goes in before blending because the oils are in the peel; the juice goes in after, because heat drives off its brightness. Add it a teaspoon at a time and stop when the soup stops tasting like a purée and starts tasting like a dish.
Variations worth making
- Cold. Chill it hard and thin with a little more stock — it tightens considerably as it cools. Excellent in summer.
- With mint or without. Mint is traditional and assertive. Basil is softer, dill is sharper.
- Higher protein. A scoop of ricotta or a poached egg turns this from a starter into a lunch and takes the protein from 10 g to close to 20 g.
Keeping it
Three days refrigerated. It will lose some colour on the second day; a squeeze of fresh lemon on reheating recovers most of the brightness. Do not boil it when reheating, for the same reason you did not boil it in the first place.
What it is worth nutritionally
Peas are unusual among vegetables in having meaningful protein — around 8 g per cooked cup — along with a great deal of fibre. At 180 kcal a serving with 10 g of protein, this is one of the better calorie-to-satiety trades in the soup category.
