So today was Mother's Day, my own mother spent half the day returning from a nice little weekend trip to Ocean City, Baltimore with my dad. She returned to a clean house and a bubbling pot of 15 bean soup on the stove. The mom of a little boy I cared for at my last job made it once and sent it in for her son, he refused it like he does with most foods (she always provided many options and leftovers were sent home) but it smelled soooo good I had to have a little bite. Well...a little bite turned into 4 bites, and then I actually had to stop myself from finishing it. Normally this is something I would never do at a daycare, its pretty much forbidden to eat the kid's food, but some moms are more casual than others and this one in particular I knew would be completely fine with me eating her baby's dinner.
Anyways, I wound up asking her for the recipe and she said it was the one on the back of the bag of 15 beans. I got all excited and went to the store to buy said bag and realized the recipe called for ham hocks, sausage or ham on a bone. I looked for a small spiral ham but most were just far too big and I didn't want to be wasteful and I'm not a huge fan of sausage 'in' things like soups...so I went looking for ham hocks.
Unfortunately, not many places around here sell ham hocks. I didn't exactly know what they were (I imagined a chunk of fatty ham that would disintegrate in a soup and provide delicious stringy chunks like what I saw) I was quite wrong. I asked my local grocery meat counter and they didn't carry it, I called the only specialty butcher in the area but they were closed that day, and though I was disappointed, the soup was temporarily forgotten.
That is until I was at BJ's Wholesale Club with my mom a few weekends later, she pointed to the ham hocks and asked if that's what I had been looking for. I excitedly went to where she was pointing and immediately recoiled. They looked like pig's feet...it was explained to me that its actually more of the knuckle, but I couldn't get past my initial shock of how unappealing it looked in the package. I called my vegetarian aunt to see if she had any ideas for a substitution and she absolutely gushed at the idea of cooking with ham hocks. She said that inside there are the most delicious bits of meat and that my grandmother often made soups with them. This was more than enough to change my opinion. I had already eaten it unknowingly and loved it, my vegetarian aunt gave it 2 thumbs up, my mom was on board and my own grandmother (famous in our family for her legendary cooking) had used them. Decision made, I was going to do it.
I held off since it has been unseasonably hot this spring and I knew eventually it would bounce back and we'd get one last chill. My prediction wasn't just right, it came with perfect timing. I decided to make the soup for Mother's Day when I knew I would be home all day to stir and check on it. I put a lot of effort into my soup and was extremely bummed out when it did not come out anything like the soup I had tried before. I had trouble getting all the chunks of fat and bone out of the soup and in the process of my digging and straining the beans got a little too mushed and blobby. The taste was pretty good, but all in all a major let down.
If anyone has any suggestions I would love to know a different way of making this soup.
And Happy Mother's Day to all the moms out there.
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Awwww, sweetie!
ReplyDeleteI will tell you how to fix your beans, but first let me say how much I enjoyed your guest post over at Mrs Q's.
My girls are both off in college now, but I too fought the good fight when they were little. Although they attended a private Montessori school, where all the children brought lunches from home, I still found myself explaining "lunchables" "bagel pizzas", etc. It was so hard not to give in and just let them eat like most of the other kids. And I confess, there might have been a special occasion or two that saw me relenting and buying a hot pocket. (shhhhh....!)
I'm happy to report that at 19 and 20 they are both vegetarians and eat way better than I do now. (it's so hard to cook for just one, you know?) Anyway.........
I'm from Louisiana (there's pork in the cereal down here, I swear), so I'll tell you how to make your beans.
I think the only thing you might have done wrong was not cook your hocks first. You have to put them in the pot with some water by themselves and simmer them for about 1 1/2-2 hours. Then take them out and let them cool while you cook the beans in that stock you just made. Add an onion and some celery and a bay leaf (whatever your recipe calls for)but DO NOT salt that ham broth.(wait til you beans are almost done then taste it)
Once your beans are almost done, you just pick the meat off the cooled ham hocks and stir it back into the pot.
You just have to cook the hocks down first. If you try to cook beans as long as it takes a ham hock to get tender you'll just end up with bean mush.(sounds like that what happened)
Hope that helps, keep up the good work, and thanks for being so good to your mom yesterday. Believe me, she appreciated the effort, no matter what the result was!
You are loved,
Shannon Wolfe
Shreveport, LA
Well now THAT makes sense. I'll have to try it your way! I almost never eat pork unless its ribs at a BBQ, I don't even like bacon. I'm more of a chicken girl.
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