Morbid Meals – Tribute to The Exorcist – Split Pea Soup

Split Pea Soup

EXAMINATION

Linda Blair plays a child possessed by the devil in The Exorcist, the classic horror flick from 1973. In what is probably the most memorable scene in cinema, horror or otherwise, she vomits up her dinner of split pea soup in an impossible 360 degree spray. I’m sure that as a result, Campbell’s stock of split pea soup forever took a hit. If you’re like me and scenes like that encourage you to try split pea soup, then give this easy recipe a spin.

ANALYSIS

Servings: 5-6

Ingredients

5 cups chicken or vegetable stock

1 pound dried green split peas, rinsed and drained

1 small onion, diced

1 carrot, diced

1 celery stalk, diced

2 cloves garlic, minced (or 1/4 tsp garlic powder)

1 dried bay leaf

1 smoked ham hock

Apparatus

• Dutch oven, and/or a Crock pot

Procedure

1. In your Dutch oven, add everything together and bring it to a boil over medium-high heat.
2. If you have a crock pot and want to slow cook your soup, then pour everything into the crock pot, cover it, and cook on high for about 6 hours.
3. However, if you can’t wait that long, keep the soup in your Dutch oven, reduce the heat to medium-low, cover, and simmer for about 1 hour and 15 minutes.
4. In either case, stir occasionally to keep the beans from burning on the bottom.
5. When done, discard the bay leaves. Remove the ham hock and dice the meat from the bone and return the meat to the soup.
6. Season with salt and pepper to taste and serve immediately.

DISSECTION

If you can’t find a smoked ham hock at your local grocery store, you can substitute with about 1/2 cup of cubed ham or cooked bacon.

You can easily make this recipe vegan simply by not adding any pork and replacing the chicken stock with vegetable stock. If you would miss that wonderful smoky note, however, you can use a little Liquid Smoke to taste.

If you have a pressure cooker, you have been warned not to cook something like this in it. However, after scouring the interwebs, I found this recipe from HipPressureCooking.com that gives a recipe and tips to make it not only possible but unbelievably fast.

POST-MORTEM

I have always loved split-pea soup. Maybe The Exorcist influenced my gothic, Horror Addict heart, or maybe I just love good comfort food. Either way, you owe it to yourself to try it from scratch. Who knows what demons might be lurking in those condensed cans of soup!