Snert _ expatlingo.comI find myself inexplicably crazy about the Dutch winter food staple snert, also known as erwten soep or split pea soup.

Snert looks like it sounds: like snot with things floating in it.

I attribute my new-found love of hot bowls of snert to hours spent cycling through cold rain under skies that turn from black to pale-grey to black again in the slim space between midmorning coffee and school pick-up.

With a belly full of snert, I recently parked my bike in front of a Chinese storefront. Puzzling through the characters, a pang of sadness passed over me as I thought about the spicy gan bian siji dou (干煸四季豆) that I used to eat at every opportunity in China.

Then the wind changed and I smelled hot, old grease being used to cook oliebollen (literally “oil balls”). Hypnotized by fistfuls of deep-fried dough coated with powdered sugar, I forgot about Sichuan spices and was briefly seduced into thinking that the Dutch winter sky was a particularly lovely color of dank, steel grey.

Help me.

26 responses to “Snert

    • Are you suggesting that the Dutch might doctor it up with something else related to snorting/snerting?

      (It’s split pea soup but more tasty that the British or American versions I’ve had before. More vegetables give it more depth and the smoked sausages added at the end really perk it up.)

  1. Ahhh – A bowl of steamy hot split pea soup w/ham is my favorite on a cold winter day. Love to try Snert if I got the chance. The pic doesn’t look as bad as it sounds but the combination of both does evoke some unpleasant imageries 🙂

  2. When I make soup, it usually looks just like that, or perhaps a little more towards the “splat of vomit” area of soups. Never thought that there was an actual soup that was meant to look like that!

  3. Pingback: A morning’s winter break in Lombok | Expat Lingo·

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