Fiery Sweet Pea Soup will help you endure the remaining winter months with it’s warming and comforting tastiness.
This recipe is adaptable, easy, and super quick to pull together any night of the week. And here’s the thing, I don’t like the taste of peas!
The pea flavor is magically masked so even the pickiest eaters will devour this scrumptious, slurpable soup! (Yes, even you, Mom!)
Who’s cold and needs warming up? Winter is in full throttle which means we’re all freezing up in hurr. Fiery Sweet Pea Soup has the cure to what ails your freezing cockles! This guilt-free soup is healthy and comforting at the same time which makes devouring it that much more satisfying!
I adapted this recipe from Leanne @ Crumb Top Baking. Her food photography looked so appetizing, I knew I needed her soup in my life, the instant I saw her post. And holy curses was I right, her Spicy Sweet Pea Soup was excellent! After one spoonful, I raced to my computer and asked if I could feature her soup on Shock Munch, I was ecstatic when Leanne said yes!
The technique used to cook the two recipes is the biggest difference between them. Leanne used the coveted Instant Pot and I cooked mine on the stove. Unfortunately, I haven’t jumped on the Instant Pot bandwagon yet. However, after reading she made her soup in roughly 5 minutes, mine took 30, I legit need to get with the program and purchase one of these puppies!
If you have an Instant Pot, go check out Leanne’s recipe, but for those of you who are pinching pennies and holding off on purchasing the magical pot like me, check out my video below:
Real talk – how’s the weather where you live? The weather in Portland has been weird this winter, to say the least. Last year we experienced record rainfall but this winter has been relatively warm and dry. The temperatures during January and February have been hovering around the mid 50’s, then suddenly we got hit with an epic snowstorm. Supposedly, it snows in Portland once every few years yet my backyard is covered with a thick blanket of snow for the second year in a row. We’re expecting another dump of snow in a couple days.
Trust me on this, I’m going to need a gallon of Fiery Sweet Pea Soup to keep me warm these next few days.
Living in the PNW has made me soft in terms of winter. See, I’m originally from Chicago where thundersnow is a thing. Chicago is freezing ass cold 4-6 months out of the year, so you get accustomed to it. I haven’t experienced subzero winters in years because Portland has a warmer climate. Kieran and I actually discarded our snow shovels after moving to the PNW because we figured we wouldn’t need them. Whoops! Last night I shoveled the snow with a grain scoop shovel designed to move fertilizer and seed. It was annoying AF!
I would look forward to the occasional snowstorm in Portland but the city doesn’t allocate funds for snow removal, understandably because snow is uncommon in this area. The city literally shuts down because they lack a snow fleet to properly clear the roads. The driving conditions quickly become hazardous because of the snow compacting into ice. As you can imagine, ice + an abundance of hills in this area = trouble.
One Portlander told me not to think of this weather as a snowstorm, but instead think of it as a snow festival. Whenever we experience a snow festival we have permission to take the day off (everything closes anyway) and enjoy it. Whelp, as you can imagine I fell in love with this idea pretty f’ing quick. Sing it with me now, Let it snow festival, let it snow festival, let is snnnnoooow festival!!!
I made an extra batch of Fiery Sweet Pea Soup, and it’s a good thing I did since I’m not going anywhere this week!
Speaking of Fiery Sweet Pea Soup, I used the word fiery in the recipe title because I used 2 jalapeno peppers. However, I don’t consider this soup spicy. It had a little kick but nothing overwhelming, at least not to me. If you dislike spicy food you can reduce the number of peppers or omit them altogether.
Vegetarians and vegans can easily adapt this recipe to their preference too. I tested several batches of this soup using both vegetable and chicken broth. I felt chicken broth rendered a richer flavor but the vegetable broth was delicious too. Vegans, you can swap the heavy cream for your favorite nut milk and omit the burrata cheese.
This recipe will obviously take longer on the stovetop than if you used an Instant Pot, but it’s still a quick recipe you can whip up any day of the week. Let’s face it, winter isn’t going anywhere so we might as well eat comforting food while we can. However, comforting food doesn’t always have to be laden with unhealthy fats. This recipe lets you get your comfort and health on too! To make this recipe extra healthy swap out the heavy cream for something healthy or omit it all together. That goes for the croutons too.
But holy swear word if you want some extra comfort you must, I repeat, you must make the burrata cheese croutons t0 accompany this soup. If you’re a long time reader of Shock Munch you know this soup isn’t my first brush with burrata cheese croutons. Check out my recipe Roasted Heirloom Tomato Soup with Burrata Basil Croutons. Holy sweet, sweet moly, I’m putting burrata cheese croutons on everythang up in hurr!
Alright, readers, that’s a wrap for this weeks post! Let me know if you make and enjoy the Fiery Sweet Pea Soup! Stay tuned next week as Kieran and I tackle the most difficult hike we’ve encountered, Dog Mountain. This hike is approx 7 miles long with a butt burning elevation gain of 3k feet. I couldn’t walk for 2 days after this hike, you’re gonna wanna see this!
Fiery Sweet Pea Soup
Ingredients
The Soup
- 2 tablespoons of olive oil
- 1 large leek thoroughly washed and chopped
- ½ small white onion chopped
- 2 in jalapeno peppers deseeded and chopped leave seedsfor extra heat
- Salt and pepper to taste
- Seasonings see notes
- 6 cloves garlicchopped
- 1 10 oz bag of frozen sweet peas
- 4 cup chicken broth you can sub for vegetable broth
- 2 cup water
- A sprig of fresh thyme
- 1-2 tablespoons fresh parsley
- 4 cups baby spinach
- 1/2-1 cup heavy cream you can sub for almond milk
The Croutons
- melted butter
- French loaf sliced
- Burrata cheese
Instructions
- Heat olive oil in a soup pot over medium heat. Add the chopped leek, onion, jalapeno, a healthy pinch of salt and pepper, and sautee those vegetables until they are soft, roughly 7 minutes.
- Stir in the seasonings (see notes)
- Now add the garlic and peas and cook the vegetables for another minute.
- Pour in the chicken broth and water then throw in the fresh thyme.
- Turn the heat to high and bring the soup to a boil. Then turn down the heat to low, and simmer the soup for 20-30 minutes.
- While the soup is simmering you can start the croutons. If you have a toaster, you can simply toast then butter the sliced bread. My toaster is in storage so I buttered my sliced bread then toasted them, on a cookie sheet, under the oven's broiler for roughly 3 minutes per side. Once the bread is toasted, set it aside, you'll add the burrata cheese later.
- After 20-30 minutes you can add the fresh parsley and spinach to the soup. Stir the greens in the soup until they wilt. Once the greens are wilted you can use an immersion blender to blend the soup until it reaches the thickness you desire. You can also ladle the soup, in batches, into a blender if you don't own an immersion blender. If the soup is too thick, you can add additional water or broth to thin.
- Once the soup is blended to your preference, turn off the heat and add the heavy cream. Taste the soup and adjust the seasonings to your liking. Let the soup sit while you finish up the croutons.
- Turn on the broiler. Smear burrata cheese over your toasted bread then transfer the bread to the oven for a couple of minutes or until the cheese is melty and bubbly.
- Transfer the bread to a cutting board and cut the sliced bread into cubes.
- Ladle the soup into bowls and top with the croutons. You can also add additional toppings such as peas, fresh herbs, or parmesan cheese.