Hambone, 7 bean & barley soup

Winter is soup season here at Chez Kairs. During my vacation week, M and I got the smallest Honeybaked Ham we could get that would still have a bone. We whittled it down for dinners, sliced it for sandwiches, cubed it up for breakfasts with hashbrowns and eggs. I almost made a quiche, until I remembered how many pastry doughs I'd dueled with over Christmas. This continued until last weekend, when I carved the remaining meat off the bone and made soup.

Without further ado... here's soup!

Ham, 7 bean & barley soup
The usual suspects:
1 yellow onion
2 carrots
4 ribs of celery

Favorite add-ins:
2 cups Henry's seven bean & barley mix
1 bunch kale, de-ribbed and cut into coarse strips

Some spices:
2 bay leaves
1 tsp dried sage

And of course:
Ham bone
Water
olive oil

Add a little olive oil to the bottom of a large stockpot. Cut the onion, celery and carrot into small dice and saute until soft. Add ham bone and cook for a couple minutes, until the residual meat on the bone starts to warm up and become fragrant. Add in bay leaves. Stir.

Add 4c. water along with bean medley. In adding the sage, I accidentally dumped about a tsp in... but since it turned out great, clearly that tsp was meant to be. I added another 2c. water, but I have an 8qt stockpot and wasn't worried at all that it might overflow. Use your best judgment in your kitchen. :)

Cook for an hour, or until the smaller beans begin to soften, then add the kale. When large chunks of meat fell off our soup bone, I fished them out and chopped them coarsely before returning them to the soup. At about 3hrs total time, all the larger beans in our soup were cooked through but not mushy. Make sure to scoop and softened marrow out of the bone and stir it into the soup (it's tasty!). Remove the ham bone and bay leaves, season with black pepper and salt to taste.

I found this soup needed less salt than most bean soups, probably because of the heavy seasoning on the starting meat. I used a little black pepper and no salt. M used more pepper and some salt.