BEAN and HAM SOUP

It has been very cold and windy here for over a week. Tonight, the ground is frozen hard and the thermometer says 10 degrees...it is definitely hot soup weather. Thick, rich, ham flavored and comforting; a crockpot of this ambrosia, simmering away in the kitchen, is all I need to battle the winter elements.


This bean soup is made with beef stock instead of water. In the final product, you do not taste beef, but you do taste its richness. I use a mixture of many different kinds of dried beans for this recipe (see note).

1 pound of good quality ham (cubed)
½ cup chopped onion
1 cup chopped carrot
1 cup chopped celery
2½ cups dry navy beans (rinsed but not soaked)
2 teaspoons salt
½ teaspoon black pepper
5 cups beef broth

Brown the ham cubes until you get a little color on the edges of the ham. Put the ham in the crockpot. In the same frying pan, sauté veggies and use the moisture from the veggies to loosen up any ham bits from the frying pan. Transfer veggies to crockpot. Add the rest of the ingredients to the crockpot and cook on low for 8 to 10 hours.

At the end of 8 to 10 hours, there is a trick. Scoop 2 cups of beans out of the soup and put them into a blender (try not to get any large ham chunks). Blenderize and return to the crockpot. This will give you a nice THICK soup.

NOTE: No need to pre-soak beans.
NOTE: Beef broth in a box is best, do not use beef bullion.
NOTE: You can use an immersion blender for the blender step, but if you do, be very careful because you can end up liquefying ALL of the beans and you don't want to do that.
NOTE: I keep a bean canister in my pantry. Whenever I use dry beans in a recipe, there always seems to be a half cup or so left in the package, so I put them into "the bean canister". Eventually, there is a very good mixture of MANY kinds of dry beans in the canister and I use them to make this soup; the bean variety is wonderful. When I do not have enough mixed beans, I use dry navy beans.

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