Green pea soup with mint: vividly green, ready in half an hour
A soup that looks like spring and is made from frozen peas all year round. The whole trick is to cook the peas briefly: six minutes is enough, and with longer cooking bright green quickly turns army olive. It is blended straight away, hot, and served with mint, cream and croutons.
Your own work in that: 14 min.
- Onion and leek 7 min
- Peas 16 min
- Blending and serving 7 min
Step by step
0 / 5 doneSoften the onion and leek
Melt the butter in a pot and cook the chopped onion and leek 6 minutes over low heat, until soft and translucent but not browned. Add the garlic for the last minute. Browned onion would tint the soup grey and kill its freshness.
Ingredients: 600 g frozen green peas · 1 pcs onion · 1 pcs leek, white part · 1 clove garlic · 1 pcs potato · 30 g butter · 700 ml vegetable stock · 100 ml whipping cream (30%) · 6 pcs fresh mint · ½ pcs lemon, juice · 1 tsp salt · ½ tsp white pepper
Translucent, not browned, six minutesCook the potato
Dice the potato finely, add it to the pot, pour in the hot stock and simmer 8 minutes, until tender. The potato, not flour or cream, is what gives this soup its body: one is enough for four portions.
Add the peas for six minutes
Add the frozen peas straight from the bag (do not thaw) and cook exactly 6 minutes from the moment it returns to the boil. Take the pot off the heat the moment the time is up.
TipThe green is chlorophyll, which breaks down with heat and with acid. Frozen peas are already blanched, so six minutes in the soup is plenty; the longer they cook, the greyer the soup turns. That is also why the lemon goes in after blending and never into the pot.
Straight from the freezer, six minutes, doneBlend immediately
Blend with a stick blender 2 minutes, until smooth. Add the mint, the cream (keep back 4 teaspoons for serving), lemon juice, salt and white pepper and blend another half minute. For a perfectly velvety soup, push it through a sieve: the pea skins stay behind.
Ingredients: 2 pcs bread for croutons · 20 g butter
Two minutes, then mint and creamServe with croutons
Dice the bread and fry in butter 3 minutes, until golden. Ladle the soup into bowls, add a swirl of cream, a mint leaf and the croutons. Serve at once: the longer the soup sits hot, the more it fades.
Cream, mint, croutons, straight away
Before you start
Served cold
The same soup chilled 3 hours, with an extra spoon of yoghurt and lemon zest: a summer soup for a heatwave, in the spirit of a Polish cold soup.
From fresh peas
800 g of pods gives about 300 g of peas, so this recipe needs about 1.6 kg of pods. Cook fresh peas only 4 minutes; they are sweeter and need less lemon.
More filling
A spoon of mascarpone or a handful of toasted pumpkin seeds on top; for a non-vegetarian version, cubes of fried bacon too. Peas take fat and salt well, being sweet themselves.
