LVA Cooking Club: Split Pea Soup

It was put into my mind to make some split pea soup.
I've got a very good recipe. It uses bell pepper and celery (cajun influence) and good amount of seasoning (ground chiles, mace, all spice, coriander).

The recipe also calls for about 1 pound of ham. In the past, I've made the soup with leftovers from a holiday ham. I don't have those any more. I could buy (and ended doing so) a ham steak and chopped it up and put it in. I didn't want to make a vegetarian soup.

Here's the quesiton: I was wondering if there might be another meat I could use that would work well. I was thinking of some form of sausage and cut it up, but none of the standard sausages seemed quite right. Anyone have any thoughts of what might taste as good as ham in split pea soup?

Pork hocks, bacon, any smoked sausage,
Also, you could get some ham bones from the butcher and cook them with the split peas.

I like your spices but would add a touch of fresh ginger!

Ham hock and pig cheek.

Also, since you are hinting at the bayou, tasso.

tonyrob, bacon, of course! It's the natural and obvious choice, and I'm plum missed it. I'm going to make another batch in two or three weeks and try it with bacon. I'll let everyone know how it turned out.

Smoked sausage, I thought of that, but it wasn't feeling quite right. I think I need to try some sausages at my local smoke house to see if any would really fit well.

Tasso, have no idea where to find it around here.

Agreed on the smoked sausage.

Guanciale! Bacon + pig jowel!

I mail order tasso from time to time. Andouille. Solves a few problems for you.

I've got friends and relatives in New Orleans & Baton Rouge but I don't bother them.
Now, I don't worry about andouille. Hillshire Farms smoked sausage works just as well. In gumbo, the flavor of the sausage isn't all that critical.

What you can't get here is boudin, the rice and pork kind you get down in cajun country.

Pig jowl... Ken, you've got a little more Andrew Zimmer in you than I. I wouldn't even know where to hunt down pig jowl. And what does pig jowl have over bacon or ham?

I thought you were making split pea soup.

I suggest looking in the jaw region!!

Well, it's not bacon or ham. Hell, ham and bacon aren't really interchangeable, when you think about it.

Smoked bacon from the Romanian Deli I used-- had to double boil my peas a second time... they didn't disapate the first 4 or 5 hours. I LOVE pea soup.
Hard to fin (Fins up!) I mean FIND a local butcher anymore for ham bone.

So, I'm at a meeting last night. A colleague of mine says he's full from having gotten back from home where he had a big bowl of split pea soup.

Everyone is making it.

I ask, what meat do you use in it? Bacon, he says. I'm the only one not using bacon. I've barely made a dent in my current batch and I'm ready to do another with bacon!

Bacon was one of the five basic elements identified by the ancients, along with fire, water, earth and air.