The Ham Bone

Finally! A month after Christmas, and we got down to the bone of that whopper-sized Christmas ham. (No, it did not smell bad, nor did it have mold growing on it. Promise.) It was time to make soup!

In the past (now the distant past) I would have made split pea soup from a meaty ham bone, but it's way too high carb. Even half split pea/half green bean soup put weight on me, as I wrote here a few months back. (Also was even worse than maltitol at making me socially offensive.)

So here's what I did with the bone:

Of course I put it in my big stock pot and covered it with water. Didn't add any salt, since it was already salty. Did add the usual "glug" of vinegar, to draw calcium out into the broth. I let this simmer on the back burner for a whole day, turning the bone end-to-end on occasion, since it stuck up out of the pot, until it softened up enough for me to bend it at the joint and fit it all in.

Hauled out the bone, picked off all the meat, chopped it up, and threw it back in the pot. Added a medium onion, diced, a bunch of leftover baby carrots sliced thin (the equivalent of a medium carrot) and two diced ribs of celery, chopping up the leaves and adding them, too. (Don't throw away celery leaves! They're wonderful.) Oh, and three cloves of garlic, crushed. Set this to simmering again.

Then I microwave-steamed two 1-pound bags of green beans till tender, and pureed them in my food processor. Stirred that into the pot. Didn't seem like enough, so I dug two cans of green beans out of the back of the kitchen cabinets, and drained, pureed, and added them, too. Threw in a bay leaf and a couple of teaspoons of dried thyme.

And then I let it simmer. And simmer. And simmer. For a day and a half! It had a lot of cooking down to do to not be watery and weak.

By last night my soup had cooked down by about a third, and tasted darned good. The texture was still a little thin, though, so I whisked in a little xanthan to thicken it up, and we had it for supper.

It was wonderful. That Nice Boy I Married pronounced it "excellent," and said it was strikingly similar to split pea soup. And we still have a lot left. Guess what I'm having for lunch today?

I don't have exact carb counts on this, because of the seat-of-the-pants way I made it; I don't even know what my eventual yield was after simmering. But here's a rundown of the ingredients, with ball-park quantities:

2 pounds frozen green beans
2 cans green beans
1 cup diced onion
1 medium carrot
3 cloves garlic
1 bay leaf
2 teaspoons dried thyme
3 cups diced ham

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
For the whole batch: 416 Calories; 3g Fat (4.7% calories from fat); 20g Protein; 95g Carbohydrate; 32g Dietary Fiber

So that's 63 grams of usable carb in the whole potful, and I'm guessing it's at least 8 - 10 servings. Since a single bowl of regular split pea soup -- 1 1/2 cups worth -- contains 42 grams of carbohydrate with just 3 grams of fiber, that's a heckuva savings.

By the way, this soup with its hard-to-analyze nature is why I haven't done a Daily Menu for yesterday. Didn't really know what to put down, you know?