Recipe from January’s Good Food Magazine

https://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/corn-split-pea-chowder

There’s something about January that calls for a big bowl of soup to warm you up from the inside and this offers heat in more than one way so seemed like the perfect, healthy winter lunch.

Difficulty rating- 2/5

Necessary equipment-

Scales

1x chopping board

1x chef’s knife

1x kettle

1x medium saucepan with lid

Measuring spoons

1x large saucepan with lid

1x measuring jug

1x hand blender

1x slotted spoon

For how many people? 4

Timings–

Total time taken (according to the recipe)- 1 hour

Total time taken by me- 1 hour 20 minutes

Hands-on time (according to the recipe)- 10 minutes ‘prep time’

Hands-on time taken by me (including ingredients prep)- 55 minutes including blending.

Cooking time (according to the recipe)- 50 minutes

Cooking time taken by me- 55 minutes

The making–

I begun by filling the kettle and turning it on. I chopped up the celery and weighed out the split peas, filled a medium sized saucepan with the water from the kettle and added the celery and split peas. I had forgotten to get fresh thyme so added half a teaspoon of dried thyme. I brought the pan back to the boil before turning it down to a simmer and covering.

I then sliced 2 onions, put a large saucepan over a medium heat, added a tablespoon of rapeseed oil and fried them for 10 minutes. While the onions were frying I grated the ginger (which I peeled but not carefully as it wasn’t specified in the recipe,) deseeded and chopped the chillies, and crushed 3 cloves of garlic. At this point the 10 minutes the onion needed to fry for had finished so I turned off the heat while I refilled the kettle and chopped up a potato and green pepper. By this time the pan with the split peas had been simmering for 25 minutes so I turned off the heat.

I returned the onion pan to the heat, stirred through the garlic, chilli & ginger and added the potato & pepper to the pan with 500ml boiling water from the kettle. I didn’t have bouillon powder so added two knorr vegetable stock pots instead. I added the contents of the split pea pan, another teaspoon of dried thyme and frozen sweetcorn and brought the soup back to the boil before lowering the heat and covering the pan with its lid while the soup simmered for 30 minutes.

At the end of the simmering time I prepped the hand blender, used a slotted spoon to remove some of the vegetables and blitzed the soup. I then stirred through the coconut yoghurt and returned the remaining vegetables to the pan before serving.

Any cheats or changes?

As mentioned above, I used dried instead of fresh thyme and stock pots instead of bouillon powder.

Any extra tips?

The soup was much milder than expected- if you want more of a kick, don’t seared the chillies and don’t peel the ginger.

Anything you’d change for next time?

I probably wouldn’t deseed the chillies as a bit more heat would have been nice.

Serving Size- Generous, it actually yielded 5 decent sized portions. I had a bowlful for my lunch, as well as putting two bowls in the fridge for tomorrow’s lunch for my husband and me and two Tupperwares with a portion each in the freezer.

The eating-

It was very delicious. It wasn’t as spicy as I was expecting but had a very pleasant warmth and was slightly sweet and creamy. The texture was pleasantly thick and smooth.

WW Points- 5

Verdict– 3.5/5- it was very enjoyable and a nice simple recipe as well as being very healthy and filling. Unfortunately, it took 20 minutes longer than stated and if you were trying to get lunch or dinner on the tablet or a specific time that would be very frustrating. It also wasn’t quite tipping over into the spectacular “must have this again” territory.