Posts tagged fall

First, a request:

I would like magazines and cookbooks to stop telling me to “just ask the butcher”* if they have bones or offal or sundry excess animal parts lying around in back that they’d be happy to part with for free! or next to nothing!

I have asked. The butcher does not have extra ham bones sitting in back. Maybe your butcher in Park Slope does, and bully for you. I have also never met a butcher who has parted with anything for free. The whole idea feels vaguely un-American to me. And Christ, that animal died for you. If my time comes and I am slaughtered for food, and someone wanted some random section of my shin, I hope that my butcher would have the good sense to charge them for it. Have some respect.

What I’m saying is that the meat counter at Whole Foods was able to dig up a bag of ham hocks, but they did not have ham bones. And that’s how I ended up making Ham Hock Soup instead of Ham Bone Soup.

There are no pictures because there is nothing photogenic about ham hock soup. It’s a cabbage/vegetable soup with a big chunk of pig leg in the middle of the pot.

It’s very good, though, and I am quickly becoming a convert to the practice of seasoning dishes with a bit of vinegar.

BEFORE YOU COOK: The recipe is not hard, but it does take some time, in part because it’s made with dried beans and in part because it’s not made with stock, so you want to cook the ham bone long enough for all the boney goodness to leach out. Give yourself an extra hour or two to soak the beans (or soak them overnight) and count on an hour and a half or so of cooking. On the upside, the soup is even better the next day, and I imagine it would freeze really well.

Ham Hock Soup

(Recipe loosely based on Melissa Clark’s Ham Bone, Greens, and Bean Soup recipe from Cook This Now)

• 1 cup dried borlotti (cranberry) beans (the original recipe calls for pinto beans, but I had the borlotti beans kicking around. I imagine you could be pretty flexible on the bean front.)
• 4 strips bacon, cut into 1/2” pieces**
• 3 large carrots, peeled and diced (I just scrubbed them well and peeled the one that looked particularly dirty)
• 2 celery stalks, trimmed and diced
• 1 large onion, peeled and diced
• 3 garlic cloves, finely chopped
• 1 ham hock, about 1 1/4 pounds
• 1 bay leaf
• 2 1/2 teaspoons salt
• 1 small head green cabbage, shredded
• (The original recipe calls for one bunch of kale, stems removed and leaves chopped into bite sized pieces. I didn’t have kale so I skipped this part. It was fine, but I imagine any relatively hearty leafy green like kale or collards or Swiss chard would be nice.)
• Freshly ground black pepper to taste
• Cider vinegar, for serving

1. Either soak the beans in cold water overnight (I have never done this), OR bring the beans a plenty of cold water to boil. Boil for a minute, turn off the heat, cover the pot, and let the beans sit for at least an hour. Drain the beans and proceed.

2. Heat a large pot over medium-high heat. Add the bacon and cook until crisp, remove with a slotted spoon to a paper towel-lined plate and reserve. Add the carrots, celery, and onion to the bacon fat in the pan. Cook, stirring, until softened, about 5 minutes (this step took me longer). Add the garlic and cook for another minute or so.

3. Add the ham hock and bay leaf to the pot and add 8 cups of water and 2 1/2 teaspoons salt (I ended up needing to add a bit more water at the end). Bring the mixture to boil over high heat; add the beans, reduce the heat to medium-low, and simmer for 30 minutes. Add the cabbage and simmer for 45 minutes (if you have kale, stir it in after the cabbage has been cooking for 30 minutes and simmer for another 15 minutes).

4. Remove the ham hock, chop up the meaty bits, and stir them back into the soup. Season with pepper, a bit of the vinegar, and more salt (I thought the vinegar sounded weird, so I didn’t add it at first, and it felt like the soup was missing something. Then I added the vinegar and it was perfect. Don’t skip the vinegar!). Crumble the reserved bacon on top.

* “If you don’t see ham bones in your butcher’s case, just ask; they will most likely have them stashed in the back.”

** I almost never eat a whole package of bacon at once, so when I make something that involves bacon, I wrap the rest up in tin foil in sets of 3 - 4 strips and freeze it. I chop it up while it’s still frozen and it thaws as it cooks.