Blended Split Pea Soup with Sweet Potato (No Added Fat)

We are having colder than usual weather, so I thought I'd make a soup. Split pea soup always turns out well, and I had the idea of making a dhal with chunks of sweet potato. Then, on further reflection, I thought I'd blend sweet potato into the dhal. Here is what I did.


Ingredients

• About 2 cups of cooked sweet potato
• 1 cup yellow (or green) split peas (1:3 8-10m)
• 3 cups water
• 1 1/3 cups potato cut into approx. 3/8" cubes (I used a small Russet potato)
• 2 cups carrots cut into approx. 3/8" thick slices (2 medium carrots)
• 2 leaves kale, stems excepted, roughly hand torn into approximately 1" squares
• 1t finely (1/8") diced ginger
• 1/8 t turmeric
• 1/2 t ground cumin
• 1/4 t garlic granules (or powder)
• 1/2 cup onion cut into 3/8" cubes (I used half red onion and half sweet onion)
• Juice of 1/2 Meyer lemon (or lemon or lime); if organic, as mine was, then use the peel as well
• Additional cup of water

Process

1. I first prepared the sweet potato. I had 3 or 4 small (maybe 3/4" thick by maybe 5" long) locally grown sweet potatoes that would cook quickly; I pressure steamed for 10 minutes (the sweet potato was quite soft and could have cooked in 7-8 minutes I bet), along with one medium purple sweet potato that I had first cut into chunks maybe 1 1/2 " long.
2. Split peas cook in a 1:3 ratio to water for 8-10 minutes. I usually like this to be thick, but with my experiment with the soup, I thought I'd go with just 8 minutes of pressure. I put the split peas, water, potato, carrot, kale, ginger, turmeric, cumin, and garlic powder into my Instant Pot and cooked for 8 minutes.
3. After the cooking was done, I waited a few minutes and gently released pressure, then mixed in the onion, lemon juice, and salt.
4. I reserved about 1/4 of the soup and put the rest in a blender, along with the lemon peel, and blended for maybe 15-20 seconds till homogenized. (I also blended in the extra cup of water as the soup thickened.)
5. I combined the blended soup with the reserved portion, then served, along with salad, and tomato-topped crusty bread.

Results

All three of us enjoyed dinner. Surprisingly, my daughter didn't complain about the ginger; in fact, after dinner, I made mango-ginger-pineapple ice cream (just blended in my VitaMix blender with a vegan almond cream) topped with cardamom, and we all enjoyed it, too!

Ideas for the future

The soup was thicker than I had thought it might be, but that's okay - it has a "stick to the ribs" warmth, good for cooling temperatures. I wasn't so happy with the color and wonder if I could make it more vibrant with perhaps a dollop of my homemade soy yogurt and, for adults, a slice of red jalapeno, perhaps. I might also experiment with similar soups, but with more chunkiness. I hope to make more blended soups!