Chrissy Teigen Cooking Journey: Day 1
Before I get into this, let me tell you about a book that changed my life: Chrissy Teigen’s Cravings.
I received Cravings as a Christmas present from an aunt and it sat gathering dust for about a year. “Who is this Chrissy Teigen chick and what the hell does she know about cooking?” thought past me.
On a whim, I grabbed it off my table and decided to read through it on a road trip to a wedding and I was absolutely blown away. Not only is Chrissy Teigen witty and charismatic, (which everybody knows by now and these traits blossom off the pages of her book) her love for cooking put into words something I had always felt myself - but never quite acknowledged. Before I tried a recipe, I knew this book was something special.
This isn’t a book review, so I won’t delve much deeper other than to say this has become my GO TO cooking book and you should 1000000000% go buy it.
I have made many of the recipes in Cravings and her follow-up book, Hungry for More. (You’re going to want to buy this one, too. I once made a SALAD from this book for a dinner party and it was the star dish. A SALAD.)
But, I wanted to go further. That is what this Chrissy Teigen Cooking Journey is about! I am going to work my way through EVERY. RECIPE. in Chrissy Teigen’s cookbooks. I will report back to you the following:
Actual cooking time (cookbooks LIE yo - or they assume you have a personal sous chef pre-prepping all your ingredients)
Ease of Recipe - through the lens of a TRUE beginner (even though I think peeling butternut squash is pretty easy, I know it can seem daunting.)
Recipe Rating
Re-cookability
Any hiccups I run into along the way
I’m very excited to share this with you! This will be like my Julie & Julia, but Natalie & Chrissy sounds way lamer.
Intros aside…. let’s get into the first recipe!
split pea soup with crispy hot dogs
(and hot dog bun croutons)
Book: Cravings
Category: Soup
“You are hesitant. I can feel it from here.” So starts Chrissy Teigen’s commentary on this recipe. And she was right, I was. I had never made this recipe before today because it sounded…. unappealing? However, I had hot dogs leftover from a barbecue that I did not want to go bad so, into the void I went.
For copyright reasons, I will not be sharing this recipe with you but there is a lovely video about it here featuring Chrissy herself with the actual recipe available here.
SHOPPING LIST: 1 lb green split peas, 1 onion, 8 cloves garlic*, 4 carrots, 4 celery stalks, 6 hot dogs, & 1 bayleaf.
(NOT PICTURED: 2 hot dog buns & 4 tbsp butter*)
* I doubled these, more on this later
Early points for this recipe already is the small size of the shopping list - this is a very affordable recipe with minimal chopping. I do have a few tips from the jump.
TIP #1: Double the Garlic in the recipe
This is rule #2 in my Laws of Cooking. It has never led me astray.
TIP #2: The Easy Way to peel garlic
TIP #3: The Easy Way to chop an onion
Once everything is chopped and ready to go your house will soon smell like sauteed onions and hotdogs (so, basically, a baseball game, but I was NOT mad about it)
Now the next step actually involves the main ingredient: split peas. Fun fact, I have never cooked with split peas before - I didn’t even know what they were (other than, ya know, peas). You can find them in the dried beans and rice section of your grocery store (I found mine in the Mexican aisle at my grocery store, if that helps). Here is what they look like for similarly lost folks:
This was also my first time cooking with a bay leaf. I felt like a chipotle employee
The colors in this photo I am ridiculously in love with.
Once all the ingredients are in the pot, it needs to sit for like an hour. You can fill some of this time by making the hot dog bun croutons and you can fill double that amount by burning the fuq out of the first batch.
The best approach I found with this is to view this process how you would make a grilled cheese sandwich - lots of butter and trying to achieve the perfect golden toast.
TIP #4: Use a bit more butter than the recipe calls for
I love butter, and this recipe only calls for 2 tbsp. I am NOT above taking a taste or two (or three) of butter as it melts on the stove. So I need to add enough extra butter to account for that and a little more to account for how much better things taste with more butter. I will not apologize.
TIP #5: WATCH the croutons as they cook
Listen I have a low attention span, this was HARD for me - hence my first burned attempt. Grab a glass of wine (I was drinking Menage a Tois’s Cabernet) and blast a Beyonce song and just stare at the croutons and bread for 5-6 minutes. Stir occasionally, enjoy the intoxicating smell of buttered bread constantly.
Alright so the last step was figuring out when this damn soup was done simmering. It took like an HOUR guys and I kept googling what this is supposed to look like at the end. So - so you don’t have to do any googling yourself. Here:
Mostly creamy (there are some pea chunks at the bottom that won’t go away unless you blend it or whatever but more on that later. It is time to compare my result to Chrissy’s. The book is very unhelpful in that regard as this is the photo that is shown to demonstrate this dish:
Chrissy Teigen & John Legend looking fine as hell, but definitely not showing me what the hell this soup is supposed to look like.
So I had to do some digging and luckily the video I referenced above did a zoom of what the soup looked like. So… Without further ado:
So, Chrissy definitely added some cream to get that shaping in the middle, but I’m just gonna say it - I THINK MINE LOOKS BETTER. I also used a copius amount of the croutons and crispy hot dogs so *shrugs*
HOW DID IT TASTE?
Honestly, it was delicious. The peas, carrots, & celery are a subtle medium for the hot dogs and the onions. And since the hot dogs simmered with the onions their taste really permeated the whole dish. The hot dog bun croutons never got SUPER crispy but they were light and buttery and, honestly, great.
Now, my ONLY complaint is the texture. Because there was no blender, the split pea residue had a very gritty, almost chalky feel which I didn’t care for. I think the dish would be perfect if it was a touch more creamy.
Est. Cook Time: 15 minutes active; 1.5 hours total
Actual Cook Time: 30 minutes active; 1.75 hours total
Ease of Recipe: 4/5 (croutons require a bit of vigilance)
Recipe Rating: 4/5 (5 for flavor, docking 1 for texture)
Would I make it again?
I think so, but I would make a few tweaks that would involve a bit of experimenting. Maybe blending half the soup (hot dogs and all) to try to reach the desired creaminess. Or figuring out an easy way to siphon the hot dogs from the split peas to just blend them by themselves. Or maybe adding a bit of cornstarch to bind everything together. A touch of cream, perhaps?
Regardless, this is a good warm summer-time soup that is relatively healthy (especially if you skip the croutons) and affordable. It will fill your house with the smell of carmelized onions and hot dogs for a few hours and honestly what could be better than that?