Portuguese Bean Soup

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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

  1. Fill a large soup pot with enough water to cover the ham hock and bring to a boil.
  2. Mince up half the onion, and a couple of the celery stalks. Add them in with the carlic, bay leaves, and oregano.
  3. 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.
  4. 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.
  5. 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.
  6. Turn the heat down as low as it can go while still having a little bit of bubbling action.
  7. 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.
  8. 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.)
  9. The oil and the remainder of the hock can be discarded.
  10. Add in the potatoes and carrots now.
  11. If you want rice and cornbread with this meal, as is the only proper way to eat it, you should make those now.
  12. After about 20-30 minutes, or whenever the potatoes and carrots are soft, add the tomato sauce, the diced tomatoes, onions and celery.
  13. Salt and Pepper to taste. Add water to thin it or a cornstarch slurry to thicken it.
  14. 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.

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