The Ricco Kitchen

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This is a super simple recipe using a leftover ham bone. So, after most of that holiday ham is devoured, you can take the bone and leftover ham scraps and make a tasty soup. I don’t know about you, but I LOVE soup when it’s cold outside. Unfortunately, for some reason it was 70°F outside today and there is a tornado warning. Yes, I said tornado warning…in southern New York. Well, we can eat this inside bundled up and pretend its cold outside.

Leftover update: If you make a cup of white rice, or even take some leftover Chinese white rice, add it to your leftover soup in a pot and warm up on medium low heat- it turns into a delicious thicker stew!

The Ingredients:

• A Ham Bone and any extra Ham scraps
• 8 oz of Baby Carrots (about half a bag)
• 1 Onion
• 1 16oz bag of Goya 16 Bean Soup Mix, or your choice of equivalent uncooked beans
• 4 stalks of Celery
• 4-5 Chicken Bullion Cubes
• 1 tbsp Olive Oil
• Salt
• Pepper
• 16 cups Water (8 cups to soften beans, 8 cups for soup)

Take 8 cups of water and put them on to boil in a soup pot. Once the water comes to a rolling boil, put in the uncooked beans and immediately turn off the heat. Let the beans soak for an hour. You could also put the beans to soak in cold water overnight, but this way is faster .

While the beans are soaking, chop up the onion, wash and chop the celery and wash the carrots. We like to use the leafy parts of the celery stalk too because it adds more flavor.

Once the beans are ready, drain them in a colander in the sink. Rinse them afterward and get all the dirty water off of your nice clean, cooked beans.

Rinse out the soup pot and put it back on the stove with some olive oil on medium heat. Sautee the onions, carrots and celery for about 3 minutes. You don’t want them to get soft, just cook a little.

Add the ham bone, drained beans…

8 cups of fresh water…

bullion cubes and 2 bay leaves.

Stir the mixture together and simmer on low heat for 1 1/2 hours or until the vegetables are soft.

If you’ve added a little too much oil to your soup when you sauteed the vegetables, you can try this handy trick…

Serve the soup piping hot with some toast or crackers.

Enjoy!