Spanish peasant soup
This is a sure-to-impress soup recipe using a pork hock rather than a bacon hock as it gives more of a sweet, smoky flavour to the soup. Bacon hocks are easier to find and they work perfectly fine too (just gives more of a saltier smoke taste). Make sure you make plenty of this grunty soup to freeze, or to give to friends in need of some winter warmth love.
Ingredients
- 1 tbsp oil
- 2 cloves garlic crushed
- 2 large onions finely diced
- 1–2 fresh pork hocks skin removed (fresh pork hocks are readily available at Asian butchers, but using bacon hock is also suitable)
- 1–2 cans crushed tomatoes
- 2–4 L water
- 2 tsp paprika preferably smoked paprika or a mix of the two
- ½ tsp cayenne pepper or chilli powder/flakes
- 1 tsp mustard powder
- 2 tbsp brown sugar
- 1–2 carrots finely diced
- 3 cups diced vegetables of your liking beans, courgettes, capsicums, pumpkin, potatoes, broccoli, silverbeet, turnip, parsnip, spinach, mushrooms, celery, kumara etc.
- 1–2 cans chickpeas drained, cannelini beans, kidney beans or a mixture
- salt and pepper
Instructions
- Sweat the onion and garlic in oil for three minutes. Place the pork hock (or bacon hock), tomatoes, water, herbs, sugar, carrot into a large pot and simmer, semi-covered for 2-3 hours, or until the pork hock is quite tender. Remove the hock to another dish to cool.
- Now add the diced vegetables, and the chickpeas and beans to the soup. Remove and discard the fat from the hock, then return the roughly chopped hock meat back to your soup. Bring the pot back to the simmer and cook for a further half hour until the vegetables are very tender.
- Taste and season with ground rock salt and black pepper.
- Serve with plenty of chopped parsley, a drizzle of good olive oil, warm crusty bread and a glass of red wine.
Notes
Note the ingredient quantities are variable, allowing you to decide how soupy or stewy you would like your soup.
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