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.  

Tuscan Pork and Beans

Long ago I had Tuscan beans at a restaurant and I really liked them. On and off thru the yrs. I would search for recipes and end up never making them. Recently someone gave me several bags of dried beans so I figured I need to find some good bean recipes to use these up. I took a couple of recipes and bit of this and that and tweaked it to make it my own. I decided that I wanted to make a one pot meal sort of like a cassoulet.

I will say this, all I found in my freezer right now was a center cut boneless pork roast. I thought this would work good since it had a nice layer of fat on it. While this turned out yummy, the pork is dry. Next time I will use a fattier piece of pork. I say that because on this pork roast was a few of the darker meat pieces and they were excellent, not dry. Also I think Ill make the beans a bit soupier. I didn't add more water when I put the spinach in and I think it would have been better with another cup of that or stock.

After all tho it was an excellent experiment and one Ill be making again. My bf says he would love these leftovers in a tortilla. While I know its Italian, I agree with him. I also think just the beans alone would be incredible to serve with other meals. 

 Tuscan Pork and Beans Makes about 4 servings.

2c. dried white beans
5-6c. water
Half a head of garlic, peeled
Two nice sage branches
1/4c. extra virgin olive oil
1 (15oz.) can tomatoes with juice
2c. chicken broth

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Mix all together in a large dutch oven and bring to a boil. Meanwhile.......

About 3lbs. of pork, either butt or country ribs as long as its got fat and marbling
Salt, pepper, garlic powder
Oil
1/2c. white wine

 Sprinkle pork with S, P and garlic powder and rub in all over. Heat a bit of oil in a pan and brown pork well. Remove and put in pot with bean mix. Pour wine into pan that had the pork in it to deglaze. Pour deglazing liquid into bean pot too. 

 When pot is boiling, put in oven to bake. Stir occasionally till beans are done and liquid is absorbed, about 2 1/2-3hrs.  When beans are done add about a half of a lb. bag of frozen spinach. You could add some fresh if you have it around. It doesn't take much to cook it.  Cook about another half hr.

You may need to add more liquid to this as it cooks. My beans were done but a bit al dente so if I had more time I would have done this.

My Famous Baked Beans

This recipe always gets asked for. Im not allowed to attend a BBQ without bringing these and no matter how many other people bring beans, theres NEVER any of these left.

My Famous Baked Beans!
1 lb. bacon, cut up

1 lg. onion, chopped

1 lg. green pepper, chopped

1 c. ketchup

2/3c. dry red wine

1/2c. brown sugar, packed

1 tb. dry mustard

1 tb. Worcestershire sauce

1 can <1lb.> pinto beans, kidney beans, black eye peas, small white beans

1 can <20oz.> pork and beans

Partially precook bacon in lg. frying pan. Drain on paper towels and pour off all but 2-3tb. of the bacon fat. To the fat, add the onion and green pepper and cook till glazed. Mix together ketchup, wine, brown sugar, dry mustard and Worcestershire. Add to the cooked vegetables and mix well. Drain and rinse the first 4 cans of beans. Put in casserole, then add all the sauce and veggies and stir. Add the undrained can of pork and beans and mix well again. Add partially cooked bacon bits on top and bake at 350degrees for 1hr. 15min.
This makes a ton of beans but I have found they freeze pretty darn good. Sometimes I take the leftovers and freeze some in sm. containers for just the two of us. Reheat in the microwave or the oven.