Bean Soup

"I am an Appalachian "kid" and bean soup was a staple in our family. Here is a little trick I learned. Cover your beans, nothing else added, with cold water, and bring to a solid boil for about 10 min..." See moreutes. Remove the pan DON'T DRAIN and SET THE PAN IN YOUR SINK. Throw in about 1/4 cup baking soda, (in the hills it's a handful) and stir like crazy until the foam that will appear disappears, (don't worry if the foam looks green). Drain and rinse very well in cold water to remove all the soda flavor, then start recooking according to the directions. Doing this, you won't have to soak the beans, it cuts your cooking time, and removes maybe not all, but most of the "gas". More soda, less gas. The reason for setting the pan in the sink is that it will foam quite a bit and could go over the sides of your pan. BTW, never used a bay leaf in my life for bean soup."

"I boil the beans in enough water just to cover them 2x, discarding the water both times. It gets rid of the "gas" without adding extra sodium that using baking soda provides. Then I add enough water..." See more for the recipe, bring the beans to a boil, and add the ham bone, or ham hocks, or fried & crumbled bacon if I have no ham. Simmer until beans are just tender. Add the carrots and celery, and also try adding a coarsely diced green pepper; cook about 20 minutes more. Meanwhile, I dice the onion as finely as I have patience to do, and fry it up in bacon grease. When it's tender, I add a mixture of flour (about 1/4 cup), paprika (about 3 TBLS) and lots of black pepper. Add this to the soup, and stir and stir - the flour will just barely thicken the soup. This soup gets raves. Contact me for canning instructions."

"I really liked this dish, but I did change a few things. As suggested by other reviewers, I used about 5 cups of chicken broth and 2 cups of water (I omitted the salt altogether). I followed the rec..." See moreipe directions for the beans and they turned out great. I increased the amount of vegetables though and would probably increase to about a cup of each in the future. Once the soup was done, I removed about 1.5 cups of soup and pureed it with my hand blender, added about 1/4 cup ketchp and added that back to the soup. The ketchup added really great flavour and the puree gave the soup a really nice consistency. Apart from adding more vegetables, I will increase the liquid for this soup next time as we did find it a bit more "stew" (rather than soup) like. Great recipe, thanks!"