Standby Recipes: Ham & Bean Soup

Anytime there's an event with a ham involved, there will certainly be ham and bean soup to follow. And when I make it, I use my MASSIVE 20 qt. pot, so there is plenty to freeze. This time around, I'm making it to prep for Baby Chickpea's arrival in January and bringing some to a friend who just had a baby last week.

(Don't let the picture fool you. This is about 20 servings of soup!)


Ingredients:

• Mixed beans, soaked overnight (at least 1 lb but I tend to add more)
• 1 ham bone
• 1-2 onions, diced
• 4 cloves of garlic, chopped
• 5 carrots, diced
• 5 ribs of celery, diced
• Ham (however much you want to add), cubed
• Water (enough to cover everything)
• Seasonings (e.g., salt, pepper, thyme, oregano, paprika)
• Optional: 1 teas. liquid smoke
• Leftover juices from making the ham (not necessary but add a lot of flavor and gelatin from the original cooking)

Directions:

• Heat a bit of oil in the bottom of the pot and add your onions, celery and carrots, seasoning with salt and pepper. Once translucent, add garlic and cook for 1-2 minutes.
• Add to the pot your ham, beans and water and the seasonings of your choice. If you have the leftover juices from cooking the ham, add them now, too.
• Cook until it looks and tastes done. I usually cook for at least a couple hours to get the beans to become a bit mushy which makes the soup thicker.
• Cool on the stove and then the fridge.
• Pack into 1 gallon freezer bags, and freeze flat in your freezer (they store easiest this way)

I usually keep one meal's worth unfrozen to eat that night, and freeze the rest. Then when we want ham and bean soup you can either thaw an entire bag at a time, or if it's just you one night, you can sit it on the counter for a short bit and break off a corner of the frozen flat-pack. Then microwave or heat on the stove the portion for just you!

Updates:

• Keep in mind the soup will be different depending on how you roasted your ham in the first place. This one was really sweet and had mustard so the soup turned out sweet and had some mustard in the seasonings. Sometimes if the ham isn't as sweet to begin with, I'll add a bit of maple syrup or brown sugar (think about maple glazed or brown sugar glazed ham...same flavor idea).
• If you can avoid it, do not use the little packet that comes in the bean mix. It has a lot of chemicals and artificial flavors. If you use the ingredients I mentioned above, it should work out just fine without that packet!