Washing soup

I recently rediscovered a deep love for my crock pot. I’ve been a crock pot cooking fool for the last few weeks. I’m not one that loves to cook. I don’t like spending an hour over the stove, so crock pots are my friend.
I was at the grocery store looking for my next set of meals when I spied the split peas. Mmmmm split pea soup. Heck Yeah! I left the store victorious. I’d spent an obscene amount of money to leave with 4, count ‘em 4, bags of food.

(An aside.. I remember growing up mom used 2 buggies at the grocery store. And not these pansy little half buggies most grocery stores have now, real buggies 3 feet deep. We’d fill two of them to the top, and never spent more than $200. And that $200 fed her, her husband and 5 kids for a week. Now, I spent $150 just getting food for two!)

Anyway… soup. Right!

I get home and start the split peas to cooking in my, you guessed it, crock pot. A quick inventory of the freezer shows no ham, no ham bone, no pork chops... crap no pork at all. Ok, don’t panic; check the pantry, grrrr no ham seasoning either. No problem. I live next door to an old fashioned southern cook. Country cooking at it’s finest. Shirley will have a piece of pork I can use to season my soup.

One quick trip next door and I’m holding a palm sized foil wrapped piece o’ pig. I unwrap it and drop it in. It’s fat back. Those of you that actually watch your cholesterol may be unfamiliar with this. It’s a piece of side meat from a pig (duh) but it’s used almost exclusively to season foods due to it’s high fat (duh again) content. Usually fat back has a ½ section of lean meat w/ an inch or so of fat.

So, 3 hours later when I go check on the soup... ack!!! All of the fat has melted. (For the record that usually doesn’t happen. but you don’t usually cook with fatback for 3 hours either) My soup now is covered by a layer of grease. UGH

I put the soup in the fridge, you know this trick ladies. Let it cool, the fat hardens and you can pick it off. Or so I thought. I get the soup out. Start to scrape off the fat and encounter... goo... disgusting jellied – goo. The fat had semi solidified into a substance that would have been right at home in a Ghostbusters movie. Disgusting stuff.

I ended up washing my soup. Stop laughing! Split pea soup, remember? When it’s cooled it solidifies into a solid block of soup. So… I took the crock to the sink, tipped it at a 45 degree angle, carefully monitored soup for any sign of movement. Not seeing any sliding, running etc I turned on the hot water got my spray nozzle ready. Then I... .. .. hosed down my soup.

After the layer of disgust was sprayed away, I reheated the soup and me and the kid ate some really good low fat, high fiber, pork flavored split pea soup.