15 Bean Soup with Ham

As I’d mentioned in an earlier post, there are five blue zones in the world where people have much greater longevity and one of the reasons appears to be their diet and they all include lot’s of beans.  I’ve had a bag of  dried 15 Bean Mix in the pantry for a few years  and decided this was a great time to put it to use – Bev is already saying we should eat beans every day.  I went off in search of a recipe that was more than just our normal soup beans and found one from one of my go-to bloggers - Tricia at Saving Room For Dessert.  I adapted it a little to suit the ingredients I had on hand but you can check her site for the original recipe and her usual great pics like this one. 

15 Bean Soup with Ham - Adapted from Saving Room For Dessert

Ingredients:

1 (20 ounce) package 15 bean mixture soaked overnight, 20

1 qt homemade ham broth

1 cup red lentils (I didn’t have any)

1 ham bone fat removed (feel free to meat on the bone)

1 cup ham cut into cubes (I used Kentucky Legends)

1 large onion diced

1 14.5 ounce can fire roasted diced tomatoes with juice (regular diced tomatoes are fine too)

2 cans original Rotel

1 teaspoon chili powder   (See Note 1)

Juice of 1 lemon

2 cloves garlic minced

3 stalks celery chopped

1 cup chopped carrots

1 cup chicken or vegetable broth

1 teaspoon freshly ground pepper

1 tsp dried thyme

Note 1: After adding two 10oz cans of Rotel and not wanting any more heat, I added ½ tsp of paprika, ¼ tsp of oregano, and ¼ tsp cumin in lieu of the chili powder.

Instructions:

1. Place the package of 15 beans in a large soup pot and cover with clean cool water by 3-4 inches. Cover the pot with a lid and soak the beans overnight.

2. Pour the soaked beans in a colander and discard the soaking water. Rinse the beans and place them back in a large soup pot along with the lentils, if using. Add ham broth and enough clean, cool water to cover the beans by two inches and bring the soup to a boil over medium-high heat.

3. While the soup is cooking, you may need to skim any foam that forms on the top. You can use a very large serving spoon to make this easy. Discard the foam.

4. Add the remaining ingredients, reduce the heat to low and simmer, uncovered, until everything is done (it took mine about 4 hours to cook), stirring occasionally.  Note: I cooked mine uncovered for a while then covered when I liked the amount of liquid remaining.

5. Serve soup with corn muffins, cornbread, or crackers and a dollop of sour cream if desired.

Bev and I both thought it was very good and the Rotel gave it a nice little kick.  I liked it with or without the sour cream and now we have beans we can eat as leftovers every day for a while.  I believe I'll use the same recipe for our next pot of pinto beans.  Thanks Tricia for our second fine meal within a week.

Here is a shot if the tasty Hawaiian Kebabs we had the previous night.

Photos can be enlarged by clicking on them and the blue words are links.

Have a great day and thanks for stopping by Almost Heaven South.

Larry

12/21/19 event date