INSTANT POT - Vegan No Fat Split Pea Soup

Vegan, No Fat, Instant Pot Pea Soup

I'm on a mission to figure out why I can't manage to appropriately soften dried Yellow Peas.   Slow cooker results were variable and still aldente no matter how many hours and hours they cooked.  I thought this has got to be it!  Instant Pot will save to the day.  Well, yes and no.  It made homemade soup made the day of seam achievable.  I mean even with the slow cooker, it seemed like a big deal and even though I do it alot, I was never nuts about the idea of an unattended appliance for 6 hours, particularly since it gets SOOOO hot to the touch.  The Instant pot is slightly warm on the sides but the lid where it's not plastic does get hot.  I love the idea of flavours melding for hours but I don't like my house getting a dousing into the pores of food smells and in the winter it's highly inefficient, heatingwise, to leave a fan running all day to suck out the heat.


This pea soup is fast and super easy.  I did run a hand blender in it at the end but you don't have to.

Vegan No Fat Split Pea Soup

2 cups or 1 lb dried Yellow Split Peas
1 medium/large Onion, minced
4 cloves Garlic, sliced
1 large Carrot, diced SMALL... i don't like big chunks of carrot in a soup... blech
1 large or 2 medium stalks of Celery, diced small too
2 small Potatoes
1 1/2 t Himalayan Salt
2-3 t dried Thyme
1 1/2 T fresh Rosemary Leaves..  Now they are from brown woody stems, you'll want to strip the needles off and chop them.  If they are from green stems (we keep our rosemary indoors in the winter) then just remove the needles from the stems and just throw them in.
Black Pepper
2 Bay Leaves

8 cups of liquid:
4 cups Veggie Stock
4 cups Water with...
1 No/Low Salt Veggie Stock Cube
2 T Dried Mushroom Powder.... now, I'm writing it this way because this is how I made it and it was delicious and I want to remember what I did.  You can just as easily just do Veggie Broth

The night before.....

Wash and rinse the Yellow Peas and set aside in a large bowl with Water... make sure the water is at least a couple of inches above the peas.  I changed the water a couple of times during the evening but that's just me.  I like to avoid the scum in the pot.

I minced the vegetables and put them in a sealable container until the next morning... EXCEPT the Potatoes.  I don't want them to brown.  I just washed them and set them aside where I wouldn't forget to put them in :D  the next morning, peel and dice them into 1cm cubes

The morning of....

Drain and rinse the peas.... throw out any discoloured ones.

Dump into the instant pot with all the veg and veg cubes.  I minced the cubes into a powder since I won't be able to stir and didn't want chunks.  Add the Water/Broth.  Add the Potatoes.  Stir to combine.

Close the Instant Pot and set the vent to Sealed.  I chose the soup but could have picked beans/chili but this time I chose soup.  Alot of recipes I came across said 15 minutes ... quite a few.  No way in heck... maybe it's Canadian Yellow Spit Peas or the air pressure in my house but there's now way that that particular legume is getting cooked in 15 minutes.  I set the soup for 30 minutes.  I set a delay timer too.... WORD OF ADVICE. unlike my  rice cooker or my bread machine.  The delay timer on an Instant Pot is the time before the cooking starts.....NOT THE WARM UP and not including the TIME TO COOk.  The Rice Cooker and the Bread Maker, interpret delay for the time it should be ready and the time to cook or bake in included.  But for an instant pot a delay of 9 hours means after 9 hours, it will start the warm up of 3-5 minutes... or even more if the contents are cold or it's really full.  then the time to cook AND THEN natural release.  So when I got home, the soup was just done.  Literally.  I had hoped it was well after natural release .

Since the kids were hungry, I manually vented and then ran the hand blender for all of 30 s.  I wanted to leave texture but I wanted some creaminess.

I closed the pot and with the heat of the soup, it sealed again... which was good cuz dad and I ate later.

I may cut back some of the liquid next time but just for density of the soup.  Not the flavour.  It was SOOOO flavourful and comforting.  I will make this again and again which is why I wrote it with the way to achieve 8 cups of broth I did.