A little random food porn

Today I made some navy bean soup, also known as ham-and-bean soup. As the second name implies, the primary ingredients are, duy, ham and beans. So, we start with the beans.

Get a one-pound bag of navy beans (you can use great northerns, as well, but it isn't as authentic. Also, navy beans are slightly smaller.). Soak them overnight:

Go to bed. When you get up the next day, gather the ingredients. You will need about a pound of carrots, a few ribs of celery, a hambone (which I hope you stuck in the freezer after you ate a ham at New Year's), chunks of ham (which I hope you also stuck in the freezer after New Year's), and an onion or two, depending on size.

Your seasonings will be salt and pepper to taste, but that comes later.

First, drain the beans, put that water in a soup pot and add about two quarts of water. Put the hambone in there and bring to a boil.

After a couple hours, take that hambone out:

Add the beans and bring that to a boil:

After that cooks for an hour or so, add the chopped celery, onions and carrots:

Bring that to a boil, then turn it down to simmer for an hour or so.

Meanwhile, chop up that ham into chunks:

By the way, this is what dogs look like when you are chopping up ham. They want.

Now add the ham chunks to the soup.

Simmer for a while longer -- long enough to let the ham flavor permeate -- and then go ahead and serve it up, people.

Bon appetit.

Food porn, y'all

I was going to do something last night, but I forgot to take pictures in the early stages of the meal I was preparing, so I figured I'd wait. Tonight, we have food porn that will help you get rid of that  Easter ham bone. Can't lie -- I did this last week, but didn't have the energy to put it up until now. No doubt, most of you no longer have an Easter ham to deal with. So file this away.

First off, get yourself a pound of navy beans or great northern beans, and put them in a pan covered by at least two inches of water, thusly:

You can now go away for about 24 hours, because that's how long those should soak. Of course, you can always start the broth now, although that can wait. I will assume you want to start the broth now. Fine. Get your ham bone out and strip all the meat off it.

Put the meat aside in a bowl or something. If you are an eager beaver and are doing this whole your beans still have a day to soak, for God's sake, put the meat in the refrigerator. Face it, you don't need it until tomorrow. Now, if you are an eager beaver, you can boil the ham bone now. Bring it to a rapid boil over high heat, then turn it down to a slow rolling boil for an hour or two. When the broth looks like dishwater and smells like ham, strainout the bone and whatever else might be floating in there. If you did this the day before, refrigerate the broth. If not, proceed. If your prepare the broth the day before and refrigerate, the fat will solidify on top of the broth and it is easy to skim off. If you're a heart-health conscious person and all. Which, if you were, you would not be fixing this soup, so fuck that. Anyway, when the broth is ready, it should look something like this:

OK, so it's the next day. Cut up some onions, maybe three small ones or two medium ones.

And cut up some carrots. Not much color if you don't (white beans, white onions, pink ham -- pretty bland looking). I like to use baby carrots (which aren't really baby carrots, ask me later) because they are already peeled. Takes about four baby carrot pieces to equal one real carrot, and you want four or five real carrots.

More color. Chop up three or four ribs of celery.

Cut up the meat you stripped off the bone yesterday, throw the onions, carrots, celery and meat into the broth, drain the beans that have been soaking and throw them in, too. Hang onto the water they've been soaking in, just in case you need to add water to the soup. Bring that sucker to a boil, then tone it down and simmer for a couple hours. When it's done, it should look something like this:

Not real exciting to look at, but it tastes great. Salt and pepper to your personal level of satisfaction, and bon appetit.