Do you cook this controversial Queensland winter dish?

When Mel Buttle was little, her mother forced her to eat this dish. Now she’s doing the same for her son. Is this controversial dish a must-eat during the Queensland winter?

My son made it to the ripe age of 2½ years until I inflicted a Buttle family tradition on him.

Like coriander, pea and ham soup has its lovers and staunch haters.

My mum would make this divisive classic every winter. I’d wake up to the potent smell of ham fat simmering in a dried pea slurry and know deep down that the next few weeks every lunch, every dinner and every answer to “I’m hungry” would be mum replying “well there’s plenty of that soup left”.

Come June each year, our freezer would be full to the brim with swamp-green blocks of this soup.

Mel Buttle. Picture: Nicole Reed

Dad hated it, he made that very clear, it wasn’t for him and fair enough too. It’s a fairly unattractive food with a texture that straddles a line between stew and paste.

While it was one of dad’s least favourites, Mum thought it was nectar of the gods.

I sat somewhere in the middle of the two, it was OK for a one-off with fresh bread and butter on cold winters day.

However, the volume my mum made was the issue, we’d be subject to litres and litres of this stuff.

As a mum myself, I think I know why it was popular, you put everything in a pot and walk away for eight hours and once the whinging about where dinner is hits fever pitch you ladle it out into bowls and you’re back in front of Blue Heelers before you know it.

This soup takes over the house, its pungent all-encompassing smell, or stench if you’re not keen, can be picked up by an astute nose the minute the front door is opened.

Pea and ham soup has never had a glow up.

It’s never had a glow up has it? Pea and ham soup has never gone high end.

You won’t see it being decorated with tweezers on the pass at Aria.

Pea and ham soup should have a word to whoever’s doing cauliflower’s publicity, as that second-rate guinea pig food is now everywhere. Cauliflower, or as I like to think of it, a watery cloud of disappointment, is now a taco filling, a staple in cafe salads and it even thinks it can be a buffalo chicken wing substitute.

I remember cauliflower before its glow up, it used to just sit there on the plate next to the roast pork looking sad, before being scraped into the bin where it belongs.

Cauliflower has had some good publicity, but it’s still a ‘watery cloud of disappointment’.

So how did the next generation take to this contentious soup?

Upon first glance he wasn’t keen, and to be honest I get it, it probably looked to him like a triceratops had vomited in his bowl.

“I no want it mummy.”

If I’d got any other reaction I would’ve been surprised, who would want this for dinner when we all know there’s chicken nuggets in the freezer?

Not one to give in easily though, I persisted. Come on, channel Wolf of Wall Street and sell this kid on this slop.

Harry loves ham, so let’s work that angle,
I thought. “This is a ham soup, it’s a yummy ham soup, can I please eat some of your
ham soup?”

An oldie but a goodie, he fell for it hook line
and sinker.

Before I knew it he was shovelling spoonfuls of pea and ham soup into his mouth and as a busy, frazzled mum that was enough for me.

The soup will live on for another generation.

Harry can expect this lumpy khaki soup to turn up every winter from now until he moves out.

Good news though, he’s not a cauliflower fan, thankfully that musty white vegetable won’t be fraudulently impersonating rice in our home anytime soon.