White Bean and Ham Stew

I made this soup last week, actually, and just got around to saying goodbye to the last bowlful today.  Talk about some hearty peasant fare.  I had planned to serve the soup with some crusty French bread, but then decided to go full on homemade and make some beer-bread. You don’t need the Tastefully Simple mix to make it either.  All you need is a flour sifter, flour, salt, baking powder and beer. Sift, mix, stir and ta-da! Yummy bread that can stand alone or serve as a wingman as you fish the last few potatoes and carrots out of your ham and white bean stew.

So, the stew.  Two words: Ham Hocks. Or is that one word? Whatever. The recipe called for 3.5 lbs of hock of ham, which seemed like quite a bit. I mean, while my knowledge of cuts of pork is spotty at best, I did know that a ham hock is, technically, the butt. Not to be confused with pork butt, though. That’s a whole ‘nother animal. Anyway, in my head, close to 4 lbs. of pig butt was way more than I wanted to undertake. When I got to the meat department though, I was pleasantly surprised to see the ham hocks came in prepackaged portions, like little butt steaks.  It said right on the package “butt slices” *hee, hee*.

At home, I soaked my beans, picked out the cruddy looking ones (of which there were quite a few), and peeled the veggies.  I felt very “Strega Nona” as my pot bubbled, my knife flashed over root vegetables and my hocks did their job flavoring the broth.  My mom, who had been visiting with my dad, came in to survey my work mentioned that she was looking forward to trying out this soup.

“What’s this?” she asked, stirring up the bean covered hocks. “Is that pork?”

Now, my mom had this on again/off again relationship with pork.  The idea that they are bottom feeders, and kind of filthy sometimes saps her appetite for bacon, ribs, and pork chops.  A few months ago, she was watching this show (probably on A&E while she waited for Hoarders to come on) and she learned that pigs, in their quest for satiety, will each just about anything.  Including snakes.

Here’s how my mom feels about snakes:

So, knowing the those wrigglers are the amuse bouche for pigs really put her on the no-pork list.  Couple that with the examination of the ham hock package (“Does that say, ‘butt slices’?), it looked like she was going to be having PB&J with the kids.  

My dad, Craig, and myself, however put the pork behind us (haha!) and hungrily lapped up the soup.  I will say that the hocks were on the salty side, so I now know what “country cured” means.  I’d probably make this again, but instead of chopping up the pork and lacing it into the stew, I’m going to take it out after it’s flavored everything and then pull a rotisserie chicken and drop that in the pot instead. A tweak here, a tweak there. . . it’ll be great. No but(ts) about it. 

Sorry, I couldn’t resist.