A rich Southern style soup of tender greens flecked with black eyed peas, scented with smoked meat or a ham bone. An old-fashioned turnip green soup is a bowl of comfort food with a taste of days gone by. And, even with the current price of groceries it'll feed the whole family for under $5. There's lots of ways you can make it your own and improvise, read on and I'll show you how it's done.
Not unlike other soups using leafy greens from other parts of the world, the soup uses a small amount of meat as a seasoning with the greens as the star.
Modern recipes use canned convenience ingredients like Knorr vegetable soup mix, so today I'll show you how to make it the old way, from scratch.
How to Make Turnip Green Soup
First you make a stock from a smoked ham hock, an onion, bay leaf, and other vegetable trim if you have some. After the meat moves from the bone the stock is strained. I've used smoked venison shanks, and a smoked turkey leg would work too.
Making the stock
The turnip greens are cut into bite sized pieces. I like to remove the stem from each leaf. After cutting the greens are soaked in water as turnip greens are notoriously dirty.
Trimming turnip greens
To build the soup you cook chopped vegetables like leek, onion and celery over medium heat until tender. Next, add a little tomato paste for color and the strained ham bone stock or chicken broth, greens and beans.
The soup is cooked for a full two hours or more until the greens are buttery soft. At the end of cooking the meat is added back to the pot. Besides smoked shanks or hocks, smoked sausage like andouille or canecuh sausage can be added too.
After it's done, to go the extra mile you can serve the soup with cornbread and hot pepper vinegar.
How to Make Hot Pepper Vinegar
Hot pepper vinegar is indispensable for many Southern-style recipes for greens. It's nothing more than hot peppers and vinegar in a jar. Start it at least the day beforehand for the flavor to infuse, and it will only get better with time.
First cut the stems from hot peppers and put them in a jar. You'll want about 2 ounces of peppers for each cup of vinegar.
Next, fill the jar with vinegar, put a lid on and shake the jar. Some recipes might use regular white vinegar but white wine vinegar will give you a less aggressive flavor.
After infusing the spicy vinegar is dashed or spooned on the finished soup to give some heat. It's also delicious used to season cooked mustard greens, collards or a bowl of pokeweed and eggs.
Related Posts
Old Fashioned Turnip Green Soup with Black Eyed Peas
Equipment
- 1 large soup pot or slow cooker
Ingredients
Broth
- 1 smoked ham hock, around 1-1.5 lbs or a smoked turkey leg, smoked bones, etc
- 12 cups water or more to cover
- 1 small onion halved
- 1 bay leaf
Soup
- 1 small leek washed and diced ½ inch
- 1 small yellow onion diced ½ inch
- 2 ribs of celery diced ½ inch
- 3 large cloves garlic finely chopped
- 4 tablespoons of cooking olive oil or bacon grease separated
- 2 tablespoons tomato paste
- 1 small russet potato (3 oz) peeled and diced ½ inch
- 1 bunch (12oz) turnip greens you can add up to 1 lb of greens
- ¾ cup dried black eyed peas great northern beans or white beans
- 1 teaspoon dried thyme or 1 tablespoon fresh roughly chopped
- 8 oz sliced andouille sausage optional
- 8 cups chicken broth or smoked meat stock
Method
- Hot pepper vinegar
- 3 oz very hot peppers
- 2 cups white wine vinegar
Instructions
Turnip greens
- Trim an inch from the bottom of the turnip greens, then lay the greens out and cut vertically into ⅓rds. Cut the leaves into roughly 1 inch cubes, cut the stems into ½ inch slices. Soak the greens in water for 10 minutes, stirring once or twice. Remove the greens (don’t dump them) into a colander and reserve.
Broth
- Combine the ham hock or other smoked meat, onion and bay leaf with water to cover. Cover, bring to a simmer on high heat, then turn down to low-medium heat and simmer gently for 2 hours. Strain the stock and cool.
- Reserve 8 cups of broth for the soup. Extra broth can be used to make a larger batch or thin the soup if it gets too thick.
- Cool the meat until you can handle it. Remove the meat from the bone, put in a covered container and chill so it holds its shape, then dice into small pieces and reserve.
- If using dried black eyed peas, cover them with 2 inches of cold water and allow to soak for an hour.
Soup
- In a 1.5 gallon soup pot or Dutch oven over medium heat, sweat the onion, celery, garlic and leek in half of the oil, cooking slowly, stirring occasionally until the vegetables are tender, about 5 minutes.
- If using sausage, cut it into slices and brown it quickly in a pan before adding to the pot.
- Add the tomato paste and remaining oil, stir and cook 2 minutes more. Add the sausage if using, and remaining ingredients except the cooked meat, bring to a simmer, turn the heat to low and simmer gently with the lid ajar for 2 hours.
- During the last 20 minutes of cooking, add the reserved meat just to heat though. Taste the soup and adjust the salt until it tastes good to you. It’s nothing for me to taste and season a soup 2-3 times.
- The liquid should've reduced and the soup should be thickened slightly. If it isn't, reduce it a little longer.
Serving
- Serve the soup with hot pepper vinegar on the side.
- Like most soups the flavor is better the day after it's made. You can double the recipe easily and turnip green soup freezes well.
Video
Notes
Hot Pepper Vinegar Sauce
Ingredients- 4 oz very hot peppers
- 2 cups white wine vinegar or apple cider vinegar
- ¼ teaspoon salt
Janice
I was looking for a non-soup mix version of this recipe too. The way you make it here is just like my gram used to. Do you think pig neck bones would work for the broth?
Cliff
Tweaks for Instant pot/pressure cooker users? This time of year I guess garlic mustard would be a good foraged ingredient?
Alan Bergo
Im cooking another batch with a ham hock as I write this. Instead of garlic mustard I’d focus on dandelions, ramp greens, dames rocket, wild mustard greens, and nettles for a wild greens version. I have some nice dandelions and chicory greens I’m adding to the new batch I’m making today.
Annemarie
I had been looking for a more original and less ‘soup mix’ version of this recipe. Conecuh sausage should be cut into desired size pieces and browned in a skillet before adding to the pot. I highly suggest pre-soaking dried legumes and discarding the water and rinsing them before adding to the soup pot. And the white wine vinegar instead of homemade apple cider vinegar? Hmmmm. Will try that! But add 1/8 tsp salt to each 8 oz jar of hot pepper sauce.
Emilee
Hello Alan! Your recipes have come in handy for me as a new forager! Could I substitute broad or curly Dock leaves for the turnip greens in this recipe?
Alan Bergo
Oh you sure can. Wild mustard greens would be great too. I would use a blend of different greens along with the dock. You can probably remove 1-2 cups of stock and cut the cooking time down to 1 hour too.
Emilee
Thank you, Alan. I noticed some wild mustard greens the other day so I'll give those a try, too!
Alan Bergo
Have fun.