US Senate Bean Soup (page 89)

Wednesday Mike decided he wanted beans, so rather than just cook up a pot and figure out what to do with them later I went looking in Joy for a recipe.  It was cold and gloomy, so what better to fix than soup?

This recipe calls for any small white bean but I just happened to have a bag of Yellow Eye beans from Rancho Gordo, which right there on the label said it was perfect for Senate Bean soup.  Did an overnight soak and drained them.

I didn't have the ham hock called for but I did have a package of salt pork that I had bought last winter for clam chowder and promptly forgot about (don't worry!  it was still good--that stuff could outlast us all).  Fried it and added it to the beans along with the rest of the ingredients.  I did fry up the onions in the fat from the pork for extra flavor.

Because the beans were very fresh, they didn't take more than a couple of hours of simmering to be perfect.  Time for dinner!

I forgot the parsley garnish, which would have helped with the overall whiteness of this soup.  It was delicious...smooth and garlicky but really salty (next time I would skip using the pork fat for the onions and either just toss them in or fry them up in fresh neutral oil).

Rating:  Mike ⭐⭐⭐⭐ (because he likes to be difficult)
              Julie ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ (because anything with beans that I can make myself eat gets an automatic 5 star rating)