byootaful

The days are getting shorter and the nights colder – by 5:30pm it’s dark and I’m in my track pants and ugh boots (attractive, I know). We pulled out our down doona about a month ago – it’s too cold for our usual blanket.  Puddy has decided it’s too cold at night too, because she comes into our room in the early hours of the morning and taps on my arm. Automatically, I lift the doona and she crawls underneath, flopping on the bed, pressed up against my side. She’s like a living, purring hot water bottle … with claws!

So while winter is cold and miserable, it’s the perfect weather for homemade soup.

I don’t often make soup but I was feeling confident one grocery shop, so when I spied some bacon hocks in the deli department I knew I wanted to get one and make a hock soup. I was originally looking for a ham hock but I’ve read that they’re quite similar, so I figured a bacon hock would be fine. I picked up some carrots, celery and an onion to go with it. I wanted to try leek but frankly, it was just too expensive to justify. Damn, because leeks are delicious.

The veggies were chopped up and put in my favourite pot. It’s small but really fat, which means it holds much more than you’d think. I use it to make pasta and big pots of mince and stews – it’s my comfort pot! I cooked the veggies until they were a bit soft and then added two litres of vegetable stock. It was at this point that I realised my pot isn’t as big as I thought – the stock almost reached the top of the pot and I was concerned when I added the hock it might overflow!

(Sorry about the terrible quality photos – I didn’t realise they were a bit blurry until after I saw them on the computer)

I added some soup mix I’d soaked for an hour in some hot water, covered with alfoil to keep the heat in. It looked really healthy and I’d never cooked with a soup mix before so it was a bit intimidating. The instructions on the soup mix packet were rather fussy and required hours of preperation, so I figured I’d just simmer the soup for longer if my pre-soaking time wasn’t adequate.

I just love that photo – you can see all the healthy peas and beans and lentils and stuff. You know, stuff we don’t normally eat! Once I’d trimmed the fat from the hock, it went into the soup. It took half an hour to bring it to the boil  because the pot was so full(!!) and then I let it simmer for about three and a half hours all up. It started to smell deliciously wonderful and I was soooo hungry, I just wanted to eat it but I knew it would take a long time to cook through the soup mix and the veggies, and there’s nothing worse than hard bits in soup (unless it’s bacon, of course!).

Once it had simmered for what seemed like a lifetime, I pulled the hock out and cut off all the meat I could find. (I seemed to forget that a hock taken straight out of boiling water would be hot and burned my fingers). There wasn’t that much meat on it – perhaps that’s where a ham hock and bacon hock differs? If I was going to do this again, I’d probably put two hocks in there. The meat was really pink, which made Phill think it might not be cooked but it had been simmering for three hours – it was definitely cooked.

It tasted really good – I was quite impressed with it. The veggies were melty but still held their shape and the soup mix had swollen up and really helped to give the soup a bit of body. The weirdest thing was seeing the peas in there – they started off as dried peas and now they were plump little green balls – weeeeeird!

There’s no recipe because I didn’t follow one – I just chucked everything in and let it simmer until it was done.

What’s your favourite soup? I’d have to say pumpkin!