Bean, Kale, & White Sweet Potato Soup, w/Special Guest: a Ham Hock!

The genesis of this soup was the discovery of a bag of Great Northern beans in the pantry. I didn't really remember buying them, which meant it was probably time to put them to use. I'd never worked with dry beans before; I'd always just credited the can opener with providing the soft, chewy beans for all my soups and other dishes. Readying these beans for use involved soaking them in a big bowl of water overnight. I loved how, by the next morning, they had slurped up a good deal of the water and expanded in size.

A couple days before, I had ventured out in search of a ham hock - yet another item I'd never cooked with.

...the ham hock.

• Vampin' Lady True Confession: I have no idea what a ham hock is. It's clearly a ham-based organism that presumably was once part of a pig, but beyond that, I'm stumped. Do I as a human have a hock? This and other questions do not keep me up at night.

I wasn't able to visit any of the farmer's markets due to my work schedule, but I remembered a little place called The Root Cellar, which is, according to their website:

"...a free-standing, retail produce store that sells local, farm-raised produce of all varieties, including value-added products like meats, cheeses, dairy, eggs, honey and maple syrup.
The core principle that guides the management philosophy of The Root Cellar is the simple focus on the food products. Food is the only focus of The Root Cellar. Good-tasting, high-quality, local and fresh — The Root Cellar is your Kentucky Proud retail market."

White sweet potatoes. I'd never heard of them either.

I went to the one that just opened at the corner of Kentucky and Swan Streets. Just so you know, the place is a dream. It's like a farmer's market, open all day, 5 days a week. Not only did I obtain my locally-produced ham hock, but the owner drew my attention to a gorgeous bunch of kale and a box of small white sweet potatoes, both of which were going to work perfectly with the soup I envisioned.

I loosely based my recipe off of this one from Yummly. Emphasis on the "loosely" - I pretty much just used the ingredients list as a starting point and then sort of went off the rails. Here's what I ended up using:

Ingredients

1/2 yellow onion (diced)
at least 4 good-sized garlic cloves (minced)
olive oil
approx. 10 white sweet potatoes (skin on, diced)
1 bunch of fresh kale (stems removed, torn into pieces)
1 ham hock
1 1/2 quarts chicken stock
6+ cups water
1 tbsp italian seasoning (I made my own - see below)
13 ozs dry Great Northern beans (not quite the whole bag)
2 14.5 oz. cans of diced tomatoes + the juice
black pepper
salt, to taste
white wine for deglazing

I sauteed the onions in the oil for a bit, till they started to get translucent, and then added the garlic and cooked it for just about a minute or so - very quickly so it didn't burn. Then I added the potatoes. For awhile, as I cooked them, it looked like I was just making a delicious batch of hash browns. It got even more hash browny when I added the Italian seasoning.

• Vampin' Lady True Confession: I don't keep Italian seasoning around... because I have all the ingredients to make it myself. I mixed together equal parts basil, oregano, thyme, marjoram, and rosemary and then pulverized it all together with my mortar and pestle. I'm all frugal and stuff!

After the potatoes/onions/garlic had cooked with the seasoning, I dumped them all into the stockpot.

The ham hock went into the pan along with a bit more oil, and cooked on its own a minute or two on each side.

The pan looked like it could use a serious deglazing, so I sloshed some wine in, scraped up the crispy bits and threw them in the stockpot, too.

I added a bit more oil and cooked the kale along with the ham hock, just until the leaves darkened and wilted a bit. Then the kale and ham hock joined the others in the stockpot.

Next, I added the beans. I didn't use the whole bag. That would have been one ton of beans.

Then I added the liquids. And I kept adding. More stock, more water... oh what the hell, how about a can of tomatoes and their juice? Why not another? That's really how it went for awhile.

I thought for sure that with the ham hock and all that chicken stock, I wouldn't need any salt. Wrong. I added several large pinches.

As you can tell from the amount of liquid I used, this soup got big. Real big. Filled my stockpot almost to the brim. I love a brothy soup, and I had added so many beans, kale pieces and diced potatoes that I had to dump in lots and lots of liquid to make it sufficiently brothy.

Making a small batch of soup is impossible. It's a scientific fact.

This monster took quite awhile to come to a simmer, and once it did, I let it go for a little over an hour. The beans needed that long to reach the consistency I wanted, and of course the ham hock needed plenty of time to infuse its heavenly hamminess into the soup.

This one was a real winner. I loved all the local ingredients I was able to use. And it got serious thumbs-up from Mr. Hits. More thumbs-ups appeared while enjoying the soup
                                                                                                           a few days after I made it, once it 
                                                                                                           had really settled into itself.

I made this soup while Mr. Hits was at work, so I had to be my own DJ. I kept it simple.

Bruce Springsteen: The River
all 4 sides