NAVY BEAN SOUP WITH HAM HOCKS RECIPES

Steps:

• Rinse and sort the navy beans. Place in a Dutch oven with 8 cups water. Bring to a boil for 2 minutes and remove from heat. Let stand, covered, until beans are softened, about 5 hours.
• Drain the navy beans and discard the soaking liquid. Rinse beans and return to the Dutch oven. Add ham hocks, chicken broth, 4 cups water, onion, parsley, garlic powder, basil, black pepper, oregano, nutmeg, and bay leaves. Bring soup to a boil; reduce heat and simmer until beans are tender, about 1 1/2 hours.
• Mix carrots, celery, and potato flakes into the soup until well combined. Cover and simmer until vegetables are tender, about 30 minutes more.
• Take ham hocks from the pot and place on a cutting board until cool enough to handle. Remove meat from the bones and cut into bite-sized pieces. Return meat to the pot and warm through over medium heat, about 3 minutes.

Steps:

• Pick through beans to make sure there are no stones. Nothing sucks like breaking your teeth on a stone when it should be a bean!
• Place the beans in the crock pot; cover with water.
• Set on high cooking and cook for an hour.
• Now, some of you will argue that we should or should not season the beans because of the skins. Well, it is a moot point here as we are adding something salty to it anyway. Moving right along.
• Ham hocks go inches If you cannot find ham hocks, don’t worry. The recipe will be fine. Just throw in a ham bone. No ham bone? You’re killing me here! You could just use a couple slices of ham.
• Add your bay leaf to the crock pot. Don’t worry – it will float. No panic. Really!
• Hack up the onion, a small dice is fine, toss it into te crock pot.
• Mince the garlic, again – you guesed it – into the crockpot. Are you with me so far?.
• Hack the potatoes into a medium dice, toss them into the crock pot. You will be needing them to give your soup some body – that stick-to-your-ribs quality. Besides, they are in season.
• Set all of that onto 10 hour on low cooking.
• Just before serving, remove the meat and bay leaf from the soup. Once the meat is cold enough to handle, shred it up!
• Puree up half of the soup with a hand blender. Do it right in the crockpot! Why waste or clean another vessel. If you have dishwashers, then don’t worry about it. If you don’t – you get the idea.
• Put the meat back into the soup.
• Now is the time to adjust for seasoning. We start off with the lemon juice, then we adjust the salt and pepper in stages.
• Taste a spoon full, think about the saltiness or the pepperiness. *I am sure that should be a word!*.
• Once the soup is where you would like it to be, ladle it up and serve it with that local artisan bread.
• Props to you! You just cooked something easy for Winter.