Baked Soup

Ingredients

• 450 g meat (any kind)
• meat trimmings or odd pieces
• 2 onions
• 2 carrots
• 50 g rice
• 500 ml split peas
• pepper
• salt
• 2 litres water

Method

This is slow baking — not stovetop cooking — which means the oven's ambient heat braises everything together into a single pot without intervention or risk of boiling dry. The sealed jar traps steam, turning it into a pressurised vessel that tenderises cheap cuts and tough legumes simultaneously.

Cut the meat into 3–4 cm chunks; leave the trimmings whole or halve them if they're large. Dice the carrots and onions into roughly 1 cm pieces — they'll dissolve partially into the broth, thickening it with their own gelatin and starch. The split peas shouldn't be soaked. Rinse them under cold water to remove dust, then add them dry; they'll absorb liquid gradually as the temperature climbs, and their breakdown will cloud the stock with their own proteins, creating body without any separate thickening step.

Layer everything into a heavy earthenware or cast-iron pot with a tight-fitting lid. If you're using a jar, accept that you're limited to smaller quantities and slower cooking — a jar heats unevenly and may crack under thermal shock, so bring it to room temperature before opening. Pour in the cold water until it covers everything by roughly two fingers' breadth, then season generously: salt draws out the meat's proteins and improves the legumes' flavour uptake, whilst pepper can go in now without its volatile oils cooking away at this low-and-long temperature. The "to taste" instruction is useless here — commit to about half a teaspoon of salt per litre.

Cover the lid with a cloth if the fit isn't perfect, sealing against steam loss. Bake at 160°C for four to five hours. The gentle heat melts collagen into economy-cooking gelatin; the sealed environment prevents evaporation and keeps the water from boiling, which would toughen the meat fibres instead of softening them. You're aiming for the meat to flake under a spoon and the peas to have mostly dissolved into the broth by hour four. The surface won't brown — this isn't a braise in the classical sense — but the flavour should be deep and the texture uniform.

Serve directly from the pot, hot, without straining. The cloudiness is intentional. Skim any separated fat from the surface if you wish; some will have risen, but the emulsion between water and rendered fat is part of the dish's richness.