There are few things more comforting than a bowl of this thick and hearty split pea soup, rich and velvety and topped with smokey bits of crisp bacon.

Simple ingredient list, complex flavor. Flavored simply with bacon, onion, chicken broth and a smidge of thyme, you’ll be surprised at the sheer amount of flavor from such a limited ingredient list.

Split pea soup is one of those recipes that gets a bad wrap. Or no wrap, actually, since it’s regularly overlooked and downright omitted from the soup lexicon in lieu of more ubiquitous options like chicken noodle and tomato the like. I mean, when was the last time you actually saw pea soup on a restaurant menu (when you weren’t driving through Buellton, California, that is)? Pea soup is more often used as a less-than-appetizing descriptor of thick, murky fog than actual soup.

I fully admit that split pea soup was so far outside my mind it was never something I even thought of until I found myself with a random bag of split peas, an impulse buy if you will (Get it? impulse? because peas are pulses? I’m so punny).

In reality, split pea soup is actually quite wonderful. There’s a reason this recipe has stood the test of time (and in fact, split pea soup or something quite like it, can be dated back to medieval Europe).

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