A Hawaii staple. It's a soup with pork, sausage, veggies, and beans, but the way I make it it ends up being more of a stew. Very hearty meal. Goes great over steamed white rice and have some cornbread on the side, you deserve it.
Ingredients
- 1-2 lb. ham hock (shank)
- 1 whole Portuguese sausage (usually called linguica)
- potatoes – as much as you want, I use 3-4 largish spuds
- carrots – the same, I just dump in a 1 lb bag of baby carrots
- 1 large onion
- 5 or so stalks of celery
- 1 large can of dark red kidney beans
- 1 12 oz can of diced stewed tomatoes
- 1 small can of tomato sauce
- 1 cup macaroni pasta
- 1 goodly large spoonful of minced garlic
- 10 or so medium bay leaves
- 1/2 teaspoon oregano
- salt
- pepper
Directions
- Fill a large soup pot with enough water to cover the ham hock and bring to a boil.
- Mince up half the onion, and a couple of the celery stalks. Add them in with the carlic, bay leaves, and oregano.
- Let it boil as long as you can, up to a few hours if you can manage that. If not, about an hour is fine.
- Use this time to cut up the potatoes, carrots, celery, and the ther half of the onion. Leave the pieces rather largish because they'll cook down, especially the potatoes.
- Pull out the hock and sit it on a cutting board to let it cool a litle. Meanwhile, cut your sausage into bitesize pieces. and add it in.
- Turn the heat down as low as it can go while still having a little bit of bubbling action.
- When the hock is cool enough to handle, salvage any bits of meat you can from it. Cut these up to an appropriate size and add them back in.
- The sausage is pretty oily so you'll have to skim it once there's a goodly layer. This'll take maybe half an hour (letting the sausage cook enough, not the actual skimming.)
- The oil and the remainder of the hock can be discarded.
- Add in the potatoes and carrots now.
- If you want rice and cornbread with this meal, as is the only proper way to eat it, you should make those now.
- After about 20-30 minutes, or whenever the potatoes and carrots are soft, add the tomato sauce, the diced tomatoes, onions and celery.
- Salt and Pepper to taste. Add water to thin it or a cornstarch slurry to thicken it.
- After about 10 minutes, throw in the beans and the macaroni. You can turn off the stove now. It'll be done in about 5 minutes.
This recipe was submitted by Juxtapose on April 18, 2006.