Somewhere between a soup and stew, all thick and creamy and soothing, this full bodied and flavorful pot of white beans is all due to the ham bone.
Ham Bone Beans
I don't know about the rest of y'all but I sure have had a difficult time getting back into the swing this week. I've been busy enough writing new recipes and even cooking, but it's the post writing part that has me pulling off my best procrastination act this week. For instance, I fully intended to have this recipe up on Monday... and here it is already Wednesday. I had it mostly done, I just kept putting off finishing the final cut and the coding that goes with all this website business.
Anyway, I do hope that you have a nice, meaty ham bone and some chunks of ham frozen from your holiday meal leftovers, just waiting for a great recipe to show up, because these beans are a fantastic way to use them. Soon as I carved up my holiday ham, the bone went directly into the freezer along with 2 big sections of ham, just perfect for beans. I sure love making a pot of beans from a good ham bone on those days when there's a chill in the air.
These beans fall somewhere between a soup and a stew really, all thick and creamy and soothing, like a pot of ham bone beans ought to be. Seriously, this is the absolute best pot of beans and it's got little to do with my skills in the kitchen. The ham bone really is the star.
While slow cookers are great for cooking all sorts of soups, stews and beans, I still love a dish that is slow-stewed, old school style right on the stovetop, something akin to what Grandma might have made, long before such modern conveniences, and store-bought, boxed broths and other nice and handy shortcuts we have available to us today. While I do enjoy those modern conveniences, I kinda like it the old school way of slowly building layers of flavors too. Y'all kinda already knew that about me though, didn't you?
Using the ham bone to create a flavorful stock first, is one of those layers. The addition of a small roux at the end, made using bacon drippings, is yet another. While you can certainly thicken these one pot meals with a bit of a cornstarch slurry added toward the end of a recipe, I've taken to doing a small roux with many of my soups and stews now, and, besides the creaminess I adore, it really does add another bump of flavor to the dish.
Yes, the old school way of making ham bone beans is a process that takes time, and a dish for modern days that is best reduced to weekend cooking for many of us I suppose, but the flavor pay-off is so worth the effort and time, provided you don't try to shortcut it. I hope you put this on your list to try one upcoming chilly weekend. Here's how to make it.
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