1 meaty ham bone roughly 2lbs (leave out for vegetarian)
3 cups peeled diced potatoes
3 cups diced celery (if you are out of celery but have celery seed that’s fine but 1 cup = 1tsp seed)
2 cups diced carrot
1/2 cup chopped onion
1 1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp thyme
1/4 tsp pepper
8 cups water or ham stock
Instructions:
You may want to clean the peas. If you want to speed up the cook time soak the peas overnight in water.
Chop veggies. Add ham bone with water into slow cooker and set for 4 hrs on high or 8 hrs on low. Add veggies to slow cooker. Add seasoning to slow cooker and stir. Occasionally stir soup. Ready when the peas no longer hold their structure. Pull bone from soup and make sure meat from bone is in bite sized pieces.
Nutrition estimated
1 bowl has roughly 234 calories, 50g carbs, 1g fat, 18.4 protein
This estimate does not include ham content as I was having a hard time finding ham bone w meat info.
Green onion, tortillas chips, sour cream, and/or bacon bits for garnish
Instructions:
Do all the prep of dicing veggies and cutting up bacon.
I used a Dutch oven but feel free to do it in a large pot or slow cooker. If you use a large pot keep a close eye on it so nothing burns to the edges. (Milk does that)
Cook bacon, when it’s brown, toss the onion in. Cook onion until it’s translucent. Add in carrot & celery and coat it w the bacon grease.
(If you are doing the veg option skip the bacon, melt the butter in the pan, add the onions, cook until translucent, and add in celery + carrots. )
Add in the stock/broth and deglaze the bottom of the pan. This is just making sure you stir in the brown stuff from the bacon that is sticking to the bottom. It gets the tasty bacon in it.
Add milk, heavy cream, salt, & pepper. Know that at this point everything is cooked so it’s fine to taste. But you really wanna heat the milk and cream for awhile. It changes the flavor. Plus, this one is a hot soup.
Add in corn. Frozen, canned, fresh off the cob. Use whatever you have. If you use canned i’d drain them and rinse. We get several dozen ears of corn once a yr and process it so we can have close to fresh corn all yr. it’s a tiring day and I don’t expect everyone to do it but I like having it.
About 15-30 min before you pull the soup off the stove add in potatoes to get hot. If you use fresh potatoes I’d add them right after the corn but I like canned potatoes cause lazy. Canned ones are almost done being cooked cause of the canning process.
Thank you to natashaskitchen.com thechunkychef.com foodandwine.com simplyrecipes.com whose recipes I read to put together what I liked and avoid what I didn’t.
2 or 3 boiled & cubed chicken or ham or leave it out
Frozen peas
1 1/2 cups shredded mixed cheeses
Salt and pepper to taste
Instruction:
Take pre cooked chicken out of freezer and defrost (I precook chicken whenever I buy it because it is cheaper to buy 6-8 chicken breasts than 2-3. I boil it, cube it, divide it into per meal sizes, & freeze it.)
If you don’t have pre cooked chicken feel free to either leave it out or cook some. If you want a vegetarian meal leave out the chicken & use veg broth.
In a large pan melt the 3 tablespoons of butter. Add in the onion and cook until translucent. When butter is melted, & onions are ready, add the rice to the pan. Toast the rice. It will still be hard at this point and that’s as it should be.
Start adding chicken or vegetable broth 1/4 to 1/2 cup at a time. stir constantly until you can part the rice and almost no liquid oozes out. Add until the rice is just about done. Add salt and pepper sometime during this slow adding of broth.
When you are adding the last bit of broth add the chicken and peas so they heat. When the liquid is cooked off and the chicken and peas are hot/warm take it off the heat.
(I use peas because they cook fast and easy. If you don’t want peas feel free to leave out or add a different veggie but if using something else you might need to pre cook them.) (you could add cubes of ham, or some other meat product (nothing to greasy) or leave it out all together).
Add the cheese and stir until melted in. Notice I didn’t specify what kind. That’s because it barely matters. Basically if you can shred it you can use it. Probably not great to use goat cheese or feta but I haven’t tried it maybe it’s awesome. Risotto purists say you can’t use pre shredded cheese but I have done this with pre shredded cheddar and Parmesan cheese and was just as happy as when I hand shredded it.
