New Year's Day 15 Bean Soup

This is suppose to bring you good luck for the year if you eat it on New Year's day. But it is good all year round, in the scorching sun or in a stormy blizzard.

You can make this bean soup in a good crockpot or if you desire or you can cook them on the stove-top.

Ingredients

(1 lb) bag of 15 bean soup mix
1 large red onion, chopped
3 garlic cloves, minced
1 (15-30 ounce) can chopped tomatoes
2 stalks celery, chopped
2 c chopped ham or a 1 lb ham hock with hambones
1/4 cup chopped fresh parsley
1 teaspoon dried thyme
1/2 tsp dill
1 tsp pepper
2 tbs olive oil
4 c chicken stock
5 cups water

Cooking this 15 Bean Soupe Recipe.

Before you do any cooking you want to make sure that you have soaked your beans.

Now, If you want you can add thing's to this soup like carrots or potatoes to make your own mixed bean soup.

1. Put the beans in a large pot and add 4 cups of water.

Simmer on medium high heat for 45 minutes. Stir Occasionally. Skim the top with a spoon to remove the foam once in awhile.

If at anytime the water gets too low add another cup of water. A pressure cooker can drastically reduce the cooking time of the beans. Make sure you get a good one though and not a piece of junk.

I like the Cuisinart 6-qt. Pressure Cooker for quite a few different reasons. One being that its more affordable and another would be the 3 year warranty.
The reason we cook the beans in the water first is because salt and acids can cause the beans to take MUCH longer to cook.

2. Put 1 cup of water and 4 cups of broth in another large pot or stock pot, add 2 cups chopped ham or a 1 lb ham hock that has the bone ( if you don't have any ham you can use a pound of bacon for your soup ) and simmer on medium high heat for 30 minutes.

3. In a large frying pan add 2 tablespoons of olive oil and heat it up on medium heat.

4. While the oil is heating up put 2 celery stalks, 1 red onion, 1/4 cup fresh parsley and 3 garlic cloves in a food processor and chop them up.Don't Puree it!

5. Then add the mix to the frying pan and add 1 teaspoon black pepper, 1/2 teaspoon dill, and 1 teaspoon dried thyme and fry it up for 4 minutes. Stirring Occasionally.

6. Now add the contents of the frying pan and the can of tomatoes to the pot with the ham and broth in it, stir it well and continue simmering.

7. After simmering the ham and broth for 30 minutes pour it into the pot with the beans. If your using a ham hock remove the ham hock and pick the pieces of ham off that you want to add to the soup discarding the fatty pieces , add what you want to keep into the beans and then add the broth to the beans and simmer for 30 minutes.