Soup & Stew Atlas · Soup
Snert (Erwtensoep)
- Easy
- 2 h 30 m
- roughly 2 of 4 for cost
Leads with an earthy, grounding base, wood-smoke running underneath, on a rich, rounded finish.
Ingredients
- 500g green split peas, rinsed: no soak needed; they are eager
- 1 pork hock or 300g bacon in a piece + 1 rookworst (Dutch smoked sausage) or kielbasa, added late
- The winter cellar: 1 leek, 2 celery ribs + celeriac chunk, 2 carrots, 1 potato, 1 onion
- 2L water; bay; celery leaves saved for the top
- Dark rye bread with butter, or the full tradition: rye with katenspek (smoked bacon) alongside
The skills inside
Skimming: foam, fat and a clear brothKnife cuts: dice, julienne, bias
The words inside
Allergen screen
Found: gluten · dairy · celery
Screened for: gluten, dairy, egg, nuts, peanuts, fish, shellfish, molluscs, soy, sesame, celery, mustard, lupin, alcohol. Not screened: sulphites.
Screened by keyword from the ingredient list, not reviewed by a person; check every label for what the list cannot show.
Method
- Simmer split peas with the hock and 2L water, skimming, 45 min, until the peas begin dissolving. 45 min
- All the vegetables in; simmer 45 min more, stirring the bottom: split peas love to stick. 45 min
- Pull the hock; shred the meat back in; add the whole sausage for the last 15 min. 15 min
- The test: snert is ready when a spoon stands upright in it; thin snert is just soup. Slice the sausage into coins; celery leaves over. Better tomorrow; correct the day after skating.
How to tell it is going right
This dish has no standard of its own yet. It is judged on the techniques it exercises: checked at the pan, while there is still something to be done about it.
Skimming: foam, fat and a clear broth 73 recipes
- It is held below a rolling boil for the whole time. Agitation drives fat and fine protein into the liquid as an emulsion, and nothing skimmed afterwards will take them back out.
- The grey foam that rises in the first minutes is lifted off and discarded rather than stirred back in.
- Fat is taken from the surface where it gathers, the pot moved off the centre of the heat if that is what it takes to collect it in one place.
- The liquid is visibly clearer at the end than it was at the start: it is possible to see down into it.
- Nothing lifted off goes back in. What was skimmed is discarded, not tipped back once the ladle is full.
Where it goes wrong The pot was allowed to boil, usually while something else was being attended to. Fat and protein emulsify into the liquid under agitation and cannot be lifted off afterwards, so the finished broth stays cloudy and greasy however patiently it is skimmed from then on.
Knife cuts: dice, julienne, bias 150 recipes
- Take any three pieces from anywhere in the pile: they match closely enough in every dimension that you would have to measure them to argue otherwise.
- The cut faces are flat and clean rather than ragged or crushed; leaves and herbs are cut through, not bruised, and the board carries no dark smear where they were.
- The stated size is the actual size, held against a rule or a known reference rather than called about right.
- Everything in the pile is the shape that was asked for: no wedges, no half pieces, and no offcuts swept in to avoid waste.
- They cook evenly, which is the entire point: at the end of cooking nothing is still raw and nothing has collapsed.
Where it goes wrong The knife was dull, or the vegetable was never squared off first, so the pieces vary: the small ones are mush by the time the large ones are cooked, and the dish has two textures where it wanted one.
At the Table
- The Pour
- Riesling or Grenache
- Also Right
- Cru Beaujolais
- From the Taps
- Farmhouse saison
- Zero-Proof
- Cloudy apple juice, chilled
Pork loves fruit and gentle sweetness: orchard-note whites and low-tannin reds flatter it where heavy oak flattens.
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