I do not like ham and bean soup. I don’t like beans in any capacity. I may be a carnivore but I don’t really like ham. We had a few snow days in March, so I made a list of meals to make and freeze while I was snowed in for a few days. Ham and Bean is one of Ethan’s favorites so I added it to the list. I cooked this recipe low and slow in our cast iron Dutch oven. Seriously, cast iron is truly the best. This can also easily be done in a crock pot if you do not have a Dutch oven.
Ingredients:
I got 2 large, bone-in, thick cut, ham steaks and 1 ham bone at the butcher section of the grocery store.
1 box chicken broth
1 bag of 15 bean soup mix SAVE THE SEASONING PACKET!
1 can of crushed tomatoes
1 medium onion sliced
Preheat your oven to 250
1 Rinse the ham steaks and cut them down to bite sized cubes. This is a rather salty recipe so rinsing the steaks is key to help cut down on the salt.
2 Add the cut ham steak, the bones, chicken broth, sliced onion, and 15 bean soup mix all to the Dutch oven. Do not add the tomatoes or the seasoning packet. Add water to help cover what the chicken broth doesn’t. 
3 Cook in the oven until the beans are soft. This took about 4-5 hours. Add in the seasoning packet, and can of crushed tomatoes- stir them in.
4 Place back in the oven to continue to cook.
In total, I cooked the soup for 8-9 hours. After Ethan was done eating dinner that night, I put the rest of the cooled soup into freezer bags. He was a wonky work schedule so having pre-portioned bags he can just pull and heat is a great way to make sure he has some REAL food on the busy days. My dad is also a ham and bean soup fan. Being that I no longer live at home and he is not my first-try guinea pig for my recipes, I made sure to bring him down a bag on one of our visits. The great part about this recipe is that it is really a one pot cook. It requires almost no stirring or checking other than a few hours in to see if the beans are cooked through to add the last ingredients. It also freezes and reheats VERY well.
The Nurtured Bee 