January 29, 2017 / In food , soup / Tagged as: ham, carrot, onion, celery, allspice, chillies, paprika, cinnamon, red lentils, orange
Ham hock and red lentil soup
Total Cook Time
4 hours
Ingredients
- 2 smoked ham hocks (about 1.7kg in all)
- 2 large carrots, quartered
- 2 large onions, peeled: 1 cut into quarters, the other finely diced
- 3 sticks celery, quartered
- 1 tsp allspice berries
- ½ tsp black peppercorns
- 2 tbsp olive oil
- 2 red chillies, deseeded and finely chopped
- 2 garlic cloves, peeled and crushed
- 1 tbsp tomato paste
- 400g tin chopped tomatoes
- 350g red lentils
- 2 tsp sweet smoked paprika
- 2 small cinnamon sticks
- 4 strips shaved orange skin, plus 200ml orange juice (ie, from about 3 oranges)
- Salt and black pepper
- [salsa] 2 tsp caraway seeds, lightly crushed
- [salsa] 60ml olive oil
- [salsa] 30g parsley, roughly chopped
Method
- Put the hocks in a large pot with the carrots, one quartered onion, celery, allspice and peppercorns.
- Add water to cover, then bring to a boil. Turn down the heat and leave to simmer gently for three hours, skimming off any fat and impurities that come to the surface and adding water as needed to keep the meat submerged.
- When the ham is almost falling apart, transfer the hocks to a large bowl and leave to cool down.
- Strain the stock and discard the aromatics and veg.
- Soup pan now. Put a large saucepan on a medium-high heat, then add the oil, chopped onion and chilli and fry for seven minutes, stirring often, until the onion starts to caramelise and soften.
- Add the garlic and cook, stirring, for two minutes, then add the tomato paste, tinned tomatoes, lentils, paprika, cinnamon, orange skin and juice, 2.3 litres of the stock, about half a teaspoon of salt (depending on how salty the stock is) and lots of ground pepper.
- Bring to a boil, turn down to a simmer and leave to bubble away for 45 minutes, until the lentils are soft and the soup has thickened.
- Make the salsa. Put the caraway and oil in a small frying pan on a medium heat and fry for a minute or two, until the seeds start to sizzle. Take off the heat, stir in the parsley and an eighth of a teaspoon of salt, and set aside.
- Pull the meat from the hocks and use your hands or a knife to shred it into 1-2cm pieces. Add the ham to the soup, warm through for five minutes.
- Ladle into bowls and serve with the salsa spooned on top.
Serves 8.
There’s a delicate orangey flavour to this soup. I usually find orange flavoured anything hard to deal with (apart from Terry’s Milk Chocolate Orange Ball….) but this is robust and delicious.
Prepare the hocks the night before and strain in the morning.