Navy Bean Soup!

What does one do with leftover Christmas Ham? Why, you make Navy Bean Soup! This is one of my favorite soups and it is relatively easy to make. The ham in this soup are my leftovers from the Maple Glazed Rotisserie Ham recipe. So let’s head on into the kitchen, shall we?

Ingredients
Bones from a ham
2 cups of dry small white beans
7 cups of water
3 stalks of celery
3 carrots
a handful of crimini mushrooms
1 bay leaf
5 chili de arboles dried chili’s
fresh ground pepper

Start off with the beans first. Put the water into your soup pot and add the beans.

Beans and water are added to the soup pot

Turn the heat up to medium high and bring it to where it just starts to boil. If you don’t catch it before it boils your beans will burst. So I check it continually. Turn the heat off and let the beans sit in the hot water for one hour.

While the beans are sitting, wash and peel the carrots. Wash up the celery. Cut both of these into small cubes. Chop the mushrooms roughly. Get out the bay leaf, the chili de arboles and your pepper grinder.

Carrots, celery, mushrooms, bay leaf and chilis are ready

Trim some of the meat off the ham bone. The chunks of ham that you have carved off should go into the soup as well, reserving a bit for, say, maybe a mac ‘n cheese with ham?

Ham bone is ready to go in

When the beans are done, add the ham bone along with the chunks of ham, carrots, celery, the bay leaf and the chili’s. Do several grinds of pepper too! No need to salt this soup as the ham will give off the salt from the meat.

Everything is in the pot!

Bring this up to a boil, then turn down to low and simmer for a few hours. Check on it every half hour to 45 minutes to ensure that it is not sticking to the bottom of your pot!

Midway through cooking

Remove the bones from the soup, let this cool and then remove the meat from the bones. Remove the chili’s at this point. These chili’s will add a bit of heat which you will feel in the back of your throat when you chow down on this soup!

Meat removed from bones before cutting into smaller pieces

Add the meat back to the pot. Stir it up to blend. Next, get out your blender and place about 2 cups of the soup into it. Puree for about a minute, and then add this back to your soup. Stir it well. Cook for another hour.

I like to serve this soup up with a warm crusty bread slathered in butter! And, here it is, piping hot and ready to eat!

Soup is ready!

Well, I hope that you enjoyed today’s adventure into the kitchen! Have a great Thursday and thanks for stopping by!