Navy Bean Soup

Yesterday I decided to make some soup......thought about what I had in the house tho. I love chicken soup but my bf isn't crazy about chicken. I was going to make my sausage minestrone but we just had sausage the night before. And so I remembered I had several bags of beans in the pantry and a couple of ham bones I need to use up. And this is what I ended up making.

I'm not real crazy about beans. And Ive never had bean soup in my life. In fact if you had asked me if I wanted this , I would have said no. But my tastes are beginning to change and I'm finding if there's enough flavor added, I like beans. And so this is my first bean soup......and I do believe there will be others now. I added more herbs than this called for and more garlic too. I'm not sure about why the carrot is in there except perhaps for color. But as I tasted this when it was cooking I was thinking some chard, spinach or some sort of greens would be excellent in this with the ham. And next time I think I'll use smoked sausage since ham is the common go to thing for this type of soup. 

Navy Bean Soup  8 servings

1 pound navy beans, picked over, rinsed and drained
10 sprigs parsley
2 sprigs each of fresh thyme and rosemary
1 bay leaf
2 large smoked ham hocks, about 1 1/2 pounds or a lg. ham bone with some meat on it
1 medium onion, coarsely chopped
2 large cloves garlic, coarsely chopped
8 cups of cold water
1 medium carrot, coarsely chopped
1/2 tsp. cayenne
Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper

Place the beans in a large saucepan and cover with cold water by about 2 inches. Bring to a boil and lower the heat to a simmer. Cook for 5 minutes; remove from the heat, cover, and let sit for one hour. Drain and reserve. Tie the parsley, thyme, rosemary and bay leaf together with kitchen twine.

In a large soup pot or Dutch oven combine the beans, herb bundle, hocks or ham bone, onions, garlic, some salt and pepper, cayenne and carrot with the water. Bring to a boil, cover, and adjust the heat so the soup cooks at a gentle simmer. Cook until the beans and hock are completely tender, about 1-1/2 hours.

Turn off the heat and remove the hocks. Cool slightly. Remove the meat from the hocks, discarding the bones, fat, and skin. Cut the meat into small cubes. Remove the herb bundle and discard.

Puree about 3 cups of the beans with a some of the liquid in a blender. (For a smoother soup puree all the beans.) Stir the puree and diced meat into the soup. Heat the soup and adjust the seasoning as needed with salt and pepper.

Pour into heated bowls, place a small pat of butter on top of each soup, and serve.

*** I was going to add some Lil Smokies sausages to this but I guess I used them up and didn't remember. However some smoked sausage of any kind would be awesome added to this and next time I make it Ill do that. The ham bone I had didn't have much meat on it but did have lots of flavor. I had some ham meat frozen from that bone so I chopped a few slices up and added that to the pot.

I also used an immersion blender to make this soup. I didn't make it a fine puree but it was mostly pureed. I liked it like that, my bf wanted more beans. So next time Ill do that. I added extra herbs to this recipe because I wanted a lot of flavor and doing that didn't hurt it at all.