Basic Ham and Bean Soup Recipe

For years I've been craving the bean soup I used to get at a deli on the town square in Elizabethtown, Kentucky. I saw this recipe and had to give it a try. After reading the reviews, I decided to use the crockpot method recommended earlier. The result? A delicious, hearty, bean soup that my whole family enjoyed and has rated "a keeper". One note here: instead of ham hocks I used the bone from a spiral sliced ham (honey flavor). Enough meat was on the bone that I didn't need to add anymore, and it had a nice, smokey flavor.

Yep... this is pretty good (it's how I make mine). But, why stop with Northern beans? I use every kind of bean and dried pea I can get my hands on. And I never take the time to soak my dried beans. I "de-gas" them by just covering them with water, adding about a tablespoon of baking soda, and bringing them to a rolling boil - about 3 times. After each boil, drain and run clean water over them to remove the husks. Then add the rest of your ingredients and cook away! You'll find the other beans/peas give your soup a much more "full" flavor. And the "de-gassing" ... well... de-gasses them! LOL Try it - I think you'll like it.

Mmm ... good. My husband made this for dinner tonight, changing only the quantity of water. (He used less 'cause he doesn't like soupy beans.) Oh, and he didn't know we had ham, so he only used the ham hocks. Still, this was deee-lish. I actually had seconds, which I hardly ever do. Oh, and you have to cook them longer than 2 1/2 hours. Just test them every half hour or so after that, and throw the ham in when they're about done. BTW, if you cook dried beans to death and they are still gritty or mealy, it's because they're too old; even dried beans don't last forever. They have a moisture content that lessens with age. No recipe can make old beans taste good.

Taking note of some of the comments on this soup, I soaked my beans overnight first, and did not add salt. I do think it was plenty salty, and would have been too salty with added salt. This is one of the best bean soups I have ever had, and was very easy to make. I am not the best at soups, so I was thrilled with how simple this was, and how well it turned out.

Great basic recipe. I both bumped up the flavor and simplified prep as follows: Soaked the beans overnight in a crockpot (just covered with cold water), in the morning I drained the beans and returned them to the crockpot. In a skillet with a tablespoon of butter, I browned a roughly diced ham steak (didn't have a ham bone)with the chopped onions, garlic, celery and carrots. This took about 5 minutes. I then added the ham/veggies to the crockpot with all the spices and 8 cups of chicken broth (instead of water) and cooked all in the crockpot all day (10 hours) on low. Soup was fantastic, great flavor, not bland at all and very simple to prep. My husband says it is the best soup I have made this winter...and I make a lot of soup!

This soup was excellent. I used a shank ham bone to make the broth two days prior so I could skim all of the fat. I didn't add any salt, as the ham is salty enough. I bought a bag of "calico beans" which were great because of the variety of beans. I only soaked them for two hours before adding them to the broth and they came out very tender. Once the soup was almost done, I took out about half of the beans and pureed them in the food processor to make a thicker soup. It was perfect and delicious. Thanks!

Excellent bean soup! I had a ham-hock left over from Easter and this worked out great! I soaked white beans overnight and cooked all about 2 hours. Wonderful!

Here's a tip: do not add the salt until after you have finished cooking the soup. Cooking beans in salt results in a less than tender bean. You may also find that adding the salt at the end will also decrease the cooking time for this recipe.

I really liked this soup! It had wonderful flavor, but I did make some alterations. I found that 1 hour soaking with hot water wasn't quite enough, so I put the beans in a pot with water to cover them with an additional 2 more inches of water. Then BOIL the beans for 5 minutes, take off from heat, and then let them sit for 1 hour. DRAIN the bean water off..To the stockpot ADD 64 ounces of chicken stock, the beans and all the rest of the ingredients, though I used more celery, about 5 ribs of celery. I also pureed about 1/3 of the soup and added it back to the pot, before adding the diced ham pieces. I found this soup to be QUICK, FLAVORFUL and SATISFYING..

Yummy! Made this with leftover Easter ham. I took some advise from previous reviews. Soaked beans over night and the next day drained, added fresh water and cooked about 2 hours before adding anything. I then added ham, carrots, celery, onion, garlic, dried mustard and bay leaves. I also took about a cup of beans and pureed them to make the sauce a bit thicker. It ws very good! I know because my husband said twice... "this is REALLY good"

The soup was great, everybody in my family loved it. It was my first time making bean soup and it turned out excellent. I think it might even be better then my grandmothers bean soup which is legendary. I took some advice from other reviews. I used 4 cups chicken broth in place of half the water. I also soaked my beans over night. I used two smoked hocks along with my ham bone which I let simmer for six hours before discarding bone and fat. I added one tsp of cayenne and eight oz. can of tomato sauce. I also took the advice to add more vegtables then the recipe called for. I added three potatoes cut into small wedges. Let it simmer all day and you will have one of the best bean soups ever.

yum. i added additional beans, thickened up the soup and put in a few more sauces. (none of which was necessary, the soup was good "as is", I just like to change things up.

Just made it — WOW.

This is very easy and tasty. I used canned beans ( rinsed) and added dry sun dried tomatoes for a little sweet.

Perfect dish to impress guests.

I pressure cook the ham hock a day ahead, take the meat off and refrigerate it. I separately refrigerate the liquid overnight so I can peel the fat off the top the next day when I make the soup. This is a good, basic recipe with mustard being an ingredient I haven’t used before.

We doubled this recipe and have loads to freeze. It's thick and delicious and for these snowy afternoons, it's perfect with a crust of bread and a side salad.

Easy and delicous

I was out of dry mustard, so I used about 2 tsps of regular yellow mustard. I also added about a Tbsp of “Better Than Bouillon” chicken bouillon. Next time I will probably cut it down to 6 cups of water.

Changes Added some chicken broth white wine garlic salt and one lb fresh spinach