Ham and bean soup is one of my favorites. I start by looking for a couple of nice sized double or triple smoked ham hocks. I do not want anything that was sugar cured. It needs to have been fairly intensely brined to work well.
Most recipes that start with dried beans tell you to soak them over night but I have a different method. I put the beans in the pot with the ham hocks as I am cooking them off for about 5 hours. It actually gives a rather surprising result.
Once the hocks are cooked off I pull them out and chop up the meat that was on them and brown up a little of the fat until it is nice and crispy and then put that back in. Then I add onions and carrots and let it cook for about 3 hours. I then add tomato juice and cook it for about another hour.
At this point the beans for the most part have actually pretty much dissolved so rather than chewing the beans they actually work quite nicely to thicken the soup.
Once it has cooled I put it in single serving containers and freeze it. The soup is awesome fresh from the pot but it becomes incredibly more awesome after it is frozen for a few days.
Anyone that likes bean soup should try this. It is REALLY good.
