Help with bean soup recipe

[rhianna813]

I have a package of 13 bean soup that i need to use. On the back there is a vague recipe that uses ham and water, plus a couple of spices. I don't have any ham and intend to use chicken stock as the base.

I have already spent my grocery budget and need to work with what I have. I don't need to add meat but I do have ground beef and tons of pork sausage (grass fed local) in the freezer. I have onions, celery, carrots, spinach, potatoes, garlic and herbs/spices. I do not have any tomato sauce (why is that??).

I'd like to stay away from mexican flavours, only because we have that on the menu a lot.

I want to cook this in my crock pot. Can anyone help with a recipe?

Thanks!

Rhianna

[Ruthla]

Here's what I'd do:

1) soak the beans overnight and discard the cooking water. (this makes them more digestable, but you can skip this step if you want, it will take longer to cook though.)

2) Sautee chopped onions, celery, and optional garlic in olive oil. Either do this in a frying pan and then add to the crock pot, or mix the veggies and oil in the crock pot and leave on high, covered, for an hour before moving onto the next step.

3) Add bean soup mix, chopped carrots and/or potatoes, and water or stock to the crock pot. Chopped sausage would probably be good here too. Let it simmer on high 4-6 hours or low 6-8 hours.

[rhianna813]

Thanks for the lead!

If I want to use the sausage do I cook it with the onion and celery? It's raw ground meat. What herbs or spices would you add if any? Maybe none if using the sausage, it's very strongly flavoured....

Rhianna

[Ruthla]

I've never personally put meat in bean soups, as generally I make bean soups with dairy meals and serve clear broth (or no soup at all) with meat meals. I'm not sure if the sausage would be best cooked with the veggies or separately- in the end, it probably doesn't make much difference, as it all gets mixed together in the crock pot anyway.

Plus the meat WILL cook in the crock pot if you put it in raw- generally meat cooks faster than veggies in crock pots. It might have a better flavor if it's precooked in the frying pan though. You could even dump all the ingredients raw into the crock pot and not precook anything.