Louisiana White Beans w/Ham & Sausage

GREETINGS FROM COLORADO!

(The hubs & I, taken yesterday, at the spot where he proposed back in 2011. [Whistlestop Run at Winter Park])

We’re out here on a family vacation, and after two days of skiing my knee has proclaimed “NO MAS!” so I’m catching up on blogging while enjoying the nice view of Winter Park Village from our balcony.

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Back around the holidays, one of the local grocers was running a really great sale on Cook’s bone-in hams…something like 69 cents a pound?  But you had to buy the big gigantor 20-pound hams to get that price.  So we had the butcher cut it in half for us, cooked one half for Christmas, and then froze the other half.

So it was finally time to do some cooking with ham (not surprisingly, 10 pounds of ham takes up quite a bit of freezer space)…and I don’t know about you, but the first thing that comes to mind when I think of ham is ham & beans.

My mom, who grew up in the rural farmland of Missouri, has been cooking ham & beans for as long as I can recall.  She has a big cast iron pot, and I always know when I come home to visit if that pot’s on the stove, good stuff is sure to be in it…any of her favorites are possible: vegetable beef soup, chicken & egg noodles, chili, ham & beans… I learned from her, as a mom with a full time job aside from mom-ing, that sometimes it’s best to just make a big batch of something delicious & then enjoy it all week long.

We won’t be using her recipe though—since I don’t already have it in my possession.  Rather, we’re cracking open the big Chef John Folse cooking bible again.  Chef Folse has never steered me wrong, so I figure it’s time to get started.

Ingredients:

1 pound dried white great northern beans
1 smoked ham hocks
½ cup bacon drippings
1 cup diced onions
1 cup diced celery
½ cup diced bell peppers
¼ cup minced garlic
2 cups sliced green onions
2 cups diced ham steak
3 (6-inch) links spicy smoked turkey sausage
½ cup chopped parsley
salt, cajun seasoning, and Louisiana hot sauce to taste

 

Directions:

First off, I need to point out—this is a stove top recipe, not a slow cooker recipe.  I HAVE slow cooker versions, however, they take 3-6 hours to cook, whereas this method takes a little under two hours from start to finish.  We still have plenty of ham left, so maybe I’ll do a Crockpot version soon.

1. Soak beans overnight in cold water, then drain & rinse in cold water.

 

2. Dice ham & sausage & set aside.

3. In a large stockpot, melt bacon drippings over medium-high heat. Sauté onions, celery, bell peppers, garlic, 1 cup green onions and ham for 5-10 minutes or until vegetables are wilted.  Then add the sausage & beans, and cook an additional 2 minutes.

 

4. Add enough water to cover the beans by two inches.  Bring to a rolling boil and allow to cook 30 minutes, stirring occasionally to avoid burning or sticking.  Then lower the temp to a simmer, add the ham hock, and allow to cook for 1 hour, stirring occasionally. Then stir in the remaining green onions & parsley, and season to taste.

Louisianans might likely serve this with rice, however, I prefer it with cornbread.

Or, well…. ON cornbread, to be exact.

(My lunch, for about a week after we made this dish.  YUM.)

If you follow this recipe, you’ll get about 12-16 servings (depending on how much you eat in a sitting), so we actually made a half-batch & got about 8 servings.

 

NutriFacts:

Calories 212.5

  Total Fat 9.3 g

  Saturated Fat 3.6 g

  Polyunsaturated Fat 0.8 g

  Monounsaturated Fat 2.6 g

  Cholesterol 32.9 mg

  Sodium 775.3 mg

  Potassium 337.5 mg

  Total Carbohydrate 18.1 g

  Dietary Fiber 5.0 g

  Sugars 1.5 g

  Protein 14.5 g

Shared on 33 Shades of Green's Tasty Tuesday