No this isn’t one of those “scroll down to the bottom to see the recipe” posts because honestly, the story is the recipe and this soup (like many things I make) could probably never be duplicated even if I tried.

THIS IS HOW I COOK. Ready?

Tale of the Unnamed Soup.

It starts with a ham. The gift of ham. Unsolicited ham! Why bring chocolate or cheese — let’s normalize the housewarming gift of ham. Thank you Cat! 🙂

I roasted a ham in the oven with leftover sweet white wine. YUM. Ham was had for a few days. Life was good.

Then it was time to do something with the ham/wine broth. I put split peas and the ham bone in the Instant Pot along with the broth and —– I always forget, it turns into goop. Sticky ham and pea paste anyone? Oy.

HWMMS decided to make “ham stir-fry” one night – which included a bunch of mixed veggies, ham, rice and so very much Cajun spice. (SO MUCH) which was VERY FLAVORFUL but tooooo hot for poor me. This made HWMMS sad, because he wanted to make something delicious for me and knew I would not be having leftovers.

What to do? Well – when life hands you ham and pea paste and WAY TOO SPICY ham stir-fry you make – soup of course!

Into the crockpot! (Aside – spell check really wants me to write crackpot instead of crockpot.)

PLOP goes the ham and pea paste! PLOP goes the WAY TOO SPICY ham stir-fry! And in goes two large jars of turkey broth.

I kid you not – the next day – this soup is AMAZING. The WAY TOO SPICY melted into the broth making it just way too flavorful. The pea paste made a gorgeous thick base – and the turkey broth evened it all out.

Yes, this is how I cook, jealous, I know.