I made some ham and split pea soup in my pressure cooker today. It wasn't anything special; I just used a ham hock, a bag of dried green split peas, some onion, a few carrots, couple stalks of celery, a couple cloves of garlic, a couple small peeled potatoes (all I had were small Yukons), a little dried thyme and parsley, 2 bay leaves, seasoned salt and pepper, a little smoked paprika, 4 cups of chicken stock, 2 cups vegetable stock (stock was store bought). I sautéed the veggies for a few minutes and then pressure cooked it all about an hour, and the meat fell off the bone. Took the ham out and used an immersion blender on the rest. Soup is good tasting, but its not that nice bright green you normally think of split pea soup being. What did I do wrong or different to give it a yellow green color?

My guess is the red paprika. Green plus red equals yellow to some degree. An option might be to add the paprika at serving for the flavor.

It may have been the Yukon Gold potatoes. They are very yellow when cooked and if there were enough of them in relationship to the died peas, that would reduce the green color and increase the yellow tint.

Hmm, I make split pea soup similar to your recipe but don't put in potatoes.

I once blended my split pea soup, and it changed color - I blamed the carrots.

Important question, ?? does tha color change tha taste ,,if not ,,, don't sweat it ,..eat and enjoy ..

I would agree with Waterman that the paprika is changing the color, I would add that when serving.

Thanks for the input. Definitely sounds like a few possibilities as to the cause. There were only a couple small peeled Yukons, maybe the size of a plum, and about 1/2 tsp of the smoked paprika, along with the 3 carrots. It does taste quite good & that's what mainly matters; maybe adding a few defrosted frozen peas would make it a little greener.

One year I could only find yellow split peas so I used them. The soup looked really unappetizing so I put in a couple of drops of green food dye. I ended up with bright green split pea soup which was even more unappetizing. Something to add to my ever growing list of things to never do again.

Wasn't planning on adding food coloring, but after that story, I definitely won't! It's not really unappetizing the way it is, it's just not the usual green one would expect.