The weather has been up and down, you can't count on temperatures staying within a norm for winter here. But in cooler months I like to have a bowl of soup for lunch so, despite some days reaching 78 F/ 25 C, I want soup.
It makes a good lunch and is usually low calorie. Well today I am going to tell you about a Fail in the kitchen. It's an Ina Garten recipe. I have cooked from her books before and had relatively good success but this time....I don't know if this wasn't tested or it was "user error".
Here is the photo of the soup brewing. All is well. It smells good. Behold the brothy texture and the colorful vegetables simmering in harmony. This has Excellence written all over it, my kitchen has a lovely aroma. My stomach is growling in anticipation for a bowl of this light brothy soup.
Now look at this photo below? WTF?! No matter how much broth I added it would absorb. Like pancakes soak up syrup........it became a sludge. Yes, I did eat it and bless his heart, my supportive husband ate it too. It tasted fairly good considering the texture was like hummus.
We had to use bread to scoop it, like hummus, rather than soaking up the non-existent broth. Too weird. Why am I sharing this dumpster fire of a meal? Beacuse we learn from mistakes in the kitchen and I know I don't want to make this recipe again.
I have made Split Pea Soup before. Using a slow cooker I made this recipe HERE and you can see (photo below) it was successful. Guess I should have used a slow cooker. Oh well, live and learn!
If you want to check out the Ina Garten recipe click HERE and it will take you to the Food Network site. Please do write me and tell me if you have success with this recipe. Maybe it was just me. Probably :-)
Linking up to Deb at Kahakai Kitchen for her Souper Sunday series.
This week's linkup may be found HERE.
I'm very pro-sharing cooking fails! We all have them and only reading about successes isn't as interesting! I've had decent luck with Ina's recipes usually so I'm surprised this turned into split pea hummus. I think I'll skip this version and try the slow cooker version instead. I don't think my husband would be quite as supportive! Plus I'm iffy on split pea soup anyway so I'm not messing with it for sludge!
ReplyDeleteThanks, Vicki, I will definitely be using the slow cooker next time. That recipe turned out. Ya never know until you try 😬
ReplyDeleteKatherine, I think if I hadn't been hell bent to Not waste the food and my efforts, and we had an alternative for lunch, I may have tossed it, We only ate the one bowl each as it was. Yes, it's good to tell about kitchen fails!
So ... is that more like a non spicy daal? That would have been lovely x
ReplyDeleteYes! Jo, you nailed it, it was actually like Daal and edible but....the brain hears soup and the visual of the sludge just couldn't make the leap. Oh well.
ReplyDeleteI have had that challenge with some pea soups--they are never very pretty soups but the flavor is always good. ;-)
ReplyDeleteI did finally get a photo to link up to Souper Sundays through the inlinkz site (you are right--it didn't like your photos at all for some reason!) ;-) but I realize now reading your post that I grabbed the wrong pic of your 'non-sludge' example! Whoops! I can try to go back in and grab the other one when I get some time.
But anyway, thanks for sharing at Souper Sundays! ;-)
Deb, I didn't mind at all that you used a pretty photo. Goodness, that sludge phot would put anyone off soup forever, ! It does taste good, a broths pea soup, but it's never really a pretty soup,
ReplyDeleteWell, maybe you created a new hummus-like dip! :)
ReplyDeleteYour other version looks delicious.....