Streit’s Split Pea Soup Mix

RB and I love pea soup. The best pea soup we’ve ever had was made by a friend of mine. My Mom’s split pea soup leaves something to be desired. Lately I’ve been in the mood for it.  I’ve never made it from scratch myself  so I decided to try a mix I found in the grocery store.

Streit’s Split Pea Soup Mix comes in a 6 ounce box that cost me less than $2.00. Each box makes four 1 cup servings prepared.It’s very low in fat and has no cholesterol. It does have 550mg of sodium, or 23%, per serving which is high. The mix is kosher. While there are no ingredients containing gluten in it, the mix is made in a facility that processes wheat.

The instructions on the box are simple. Boil 4 cups of water. Add the bag containing the peas. Cover and simmer over low heat for 45 minutes. Add the contents of the seasoning bag. Simmer 15 minutes until the peas have turned to puree. That’s it.

Sounds like it’s easy and can’t be screwed up, right? Wrong.

I followed the instructions to the letter. Things were going well. Fifteen minutes into the simmer on low heat things went bad - the peas started to stick to the bottom of the pot and burn. I took them out, put them into another pot and added some hot water while I scraped the first pot out and put it into the sink to soak. I put the soup mix back onto low heat on the stove. At twenty five minutes the peas had broken down a bit. We like some ham in our pea soup so I threw in some ham chunks along with the seasoning. I stirred everything a few times and let it simmer for another fifteen minutes and took it off of the stove. It was clear things would not be getting any better.

The soup looked pretty good. Unfortunately I can’t say the same for the flavor. The peas never pureed completely so the soup was quite lumpy and grainy. You could also taste that it had burnt.

I won’t be buying this again and I don’t recommend it.