It just so had it that I found this gift certificate for a spiral cut honey baked ham while digging through some old papers about a week ago, so I went to the place (logan farms) and picked up my ham and ate most of it. Anyways not being the type of person to let anything go to waste anymore I decided to use the ham bone to make a pot of beans (probably has about.. 2 lbs of ham still on it). So I figured I would tell you guys the recipe should you ever want to make em.
I use a mixture of Kidney Beans, Red Beans, Lentils, Garbanza Beans, and Lima Beans first and foremost, I let em soak all night and then in the morning I get the chunk of ham bone that I saved and I stick it in a crock pot.
After that I slice up two onions, eight cloves of garlic, a jalapeno, a serrano, and two shallots really small and toss it in the bottom of the bowl. I then stuff as many beans as I can into the pot, pour water on top until its about an inch above the beans and start cooking it after that step is done.
After all the stuff that needs to basically disintegrate into the beans is cooking at the highest temperature I toss in all the dry and liquid ingredients that don't need to break down. I toss in some black pepper, some coarse sea salt, worcestershire sauce, molasses, brown sugar, ancho pepper powder, chipotle pepper powder, and a little bit of stone ground mustard and sorta stir the top of water where all this stuff is just sitting until it starts mixing into the water evenly without puling up all the veggies. I just let that cook tightly covered with a towel over the lid to make sure it "pressure cooks" as much as possible because the longer it cooks the more marrow is drained out of that ham bone and the more flavor the beans will have.
Really good, and you can always buy some ham hocks at the store if you want to make this without spending like 40 bucks on a spiral cut honey ham.
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So recently because chicken is so fucking expensive these days we have started to buy whole chickens and just cooking those and getting the breast meat and drumsticks off of them, its basically like half price and not really much harder, especially if you buy a decent brand of chicken that is already cleaned well. So I also like to make lots of soups, potato and tortilla and my personal favorite chicken and dumplings and I end up spending like 10 dollars on chicken stock and chicken broth to use as a base for my soups.
So anyways after I cook the chicken and pull all the good meat off of it I throw the rest of the meat (usually dark meat since it has the most flavor/fat) and the bones back into a pan, and put about half a gallon or so of water into it. I cut up two onions, a few stalks of celery, some carrots, some garlic, and add some salt and pepper into the sauce.
After you got all that mixed in you need to cook it for a very very long time on a simmer.. generally around 10-12 hours, the longer you cook it the more the water evaporates and the stronger broth you are going to get, if you let it cook down even more where it turns almost a brown color you are getting chicken stock out of it.
Anyways after you cook it down till you think its ready, get a big bowl and strain it like 3-4 times to get out all the skin and bone pieces etc, and then let it cool down and stick it in the fridge overnight. The next morning there will be probably about a.. 1-1 and a half inch layer of fat on the top that solidifies in the cooler temperature, you can scoop a majority of that off but keep some of it as it has tons of flavor.
Anyways instead of spending like 8 dollars for 2 lbs of chicken breast and 10 dollars for chicken broth/stock for soup bases I spend like 5 dollars on a whole chicken and a few vegetables and it tastes much better anyways.
I use a mixture of Kidney Beans, Red Beans, Lentils, Garbanza Beans, and Lima Beans first and foremost, I let em soak all night and then in the morning I get the chunk of ham bone that I saved and I stick it in a crock pot.
After that I slice up two onions, eight cloves of garlic, a jalapeno, a serrano, and two shallots really small and toss it in the bottom of the bowl. I then stuff as many beans as I can into the pot, pour water on top until its about an inch above the beans and start cooking it after that step is done.
After all the stuff that needs to basically disintegrate into the beans is cooking at the highest temperature I toss in all the dry and liquid ingredients that don't need to break down. I toss in some black pepper, some coarse sea salt, worcestershire sauce, molasses, brown sugar, ancho pepper powder, chipotle pepper powder, and a little bit of stone ground mustard and sorta stir the top of water where all this stuff is just sitting until it starts mixing into the water evenly without puling up all the veggies. I just let that cook tightly covered with a towel over the lid to make sure it "pressure cooks" as much as possible because the longer it cooks the more marrow is drained out of that ham bone and the more flavor the beans will have.
Really good, and you can always buy some ham hocks at the store if you want to make this without spending like 40 bucks on a spiral cut honey ham.
-----
So recently because chicken is so fucking expensive these days we have started to buy whole chickens and just cooking those and getting the breast meat and drumsticks off of them, its basically like half price and not really much harder, especially if you buy a decent brand of chicken that is already cleaned well. So I also like to make lots of soups, potato and tortilla and my personal favorite chicken and dumplings and I end up spending like 10 dollars on chicken stock and chicken broth to use as a base for my soups.
So anyways after I cook the chicken and pull all the good meat off of it I throw the rest of the meat (usually dark meat since it has the most flavor/fat) and the bones back into a pan, and put about half a gallon or so of water into it. I cut up two onions, a few stalks of celery, some carrots, some garlic, and add some salt and pepper into the sauce.
After you got all that mixed in you need to cook it for a very very long time on a simmer.. generally around 10-12 hours, the longer you cook it the more the water evaporates and the stronger broth you are going to get, if you let it cook down even more where it turns almost a brown color you are getting chicken stock out of it.
Anyways after you cook it down till you think its ready, get a big bowl and strain it like 3-4 times to get out all the skin and bone pieces etc, and then let it cool down and stick it in the fridge overnight. The next morning there will be probably about a.. 1-1 and a half inch layer of fat on the top that solidifies in the cooler temperature, you can scoop a majority of that off but keep some of it as it has tons of flavor.
Anyways instead of spending like 8 dollars for 2 lbs of chicken breast and 10 dollars for chicken broth/stock for soup bases I spend like 5 dollars on a whole chicken and a few vegetables and it tastes much better anyways.
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