Smoked Ham and Lentil Stew

What's one to do with the bone from a perfectly good roast smoked ham?  I had plenty of the latter left after mine and Andrew's private Thanksgiving feast this past Sunday, as Andrew had rather zealously brought home a twelve pound ham for the two of us.  A good deal of it went into two separate pot pies and several ham sandwiches, but still- I had the bone.  And of course, being the soup lover that I am, I knew exactly what to do with it.
     This is an extremely simple and satisfying recipe.  It consists of simply combining all of the ingredients into a large pot for about two and a half hours and results into a filling, hearty meal.  As a bonus, not only did I have all the meat on the bone, but I had roughly a pound or two left from the fatty end of the ham itself.  This significantly bolstered the recipe in terms of volume, flavor, and filling ability.



Ingredients

1 lb lentils, rinsed
1 leftover ham bone
1-2 lbs ham, cubed into bite-sized pieces (and trimmed of most of its fat)
3 medium potatoes, cubed into bite-sized pieces 
2 large onions, coarsely chopped
1/2 lb baby carrots, chopped into bite-sized pieces
6 cloves fresh crushed garlic
12 cups water
black ground pepper, to taste
cumin, to taste

Reserving the cubed ham pieces, combine all of the above ingredients and stir well into a large pot.  Bring to a simmer, and simmer over low heat for about two hours and thirty minutes, occasionally stirring.  This allows the ham bone to turn the water into a delicious ham stock, and for the cook to be able to strip the bone of any stubborn pieces of meat.  Remove the bone and allow it to cool after this time has passed, and add your reserved ham pieces.  Once the ham bone has cooled, salvage what meat you can and put it into the soup, discarding the rest.

That's really all there is to it- low heat and patience yields one of the few recipes that I have ever made that doesn't require seconds to make me feel full.
 

Hearty Beef Stew

I must say that this is truly one of the tastiest recipes that I have worked with.  Beef stew is best made with chuck steak, a flavorful cut that is perfect for long and slow simmering.  Its connective tissue and high amount of marbling helps to thicken the stew.  Grocery stores often do sell it pre-cut in chunks for stew, but it is better to buy a whole steak if you can and do your own cutting to ensure more evenly sized pieces (about one and a half inch cubes).  I unfortunately had no choice in the matter when I went to the grocery store- there was only the pre-cut option.  Most of the pieces were smaller than I would have liked, and there was little consistency in the actual size.  At least it was the correct cut of meat, and it is convenient to not have to do your own chopping.

I pulled the recipe almost directly from Cook's Illustrated, with only a few minor changes.  A bit more garlic, for instance, and I used a cabernet sauvignon as opposed to a drier red wine.  They also recommended waiting to put the vegetables in halfway through the cooking time, but the first time I tried this, I ended up having to cook the whole thing an extra hour because the potatoes and carrots were still quite crunchy after only one hour.  This is very likely due to my oven being very old and inefficient, so if you have a more modern appliance, you may want to follow Cook's Illustrated's lead unless you like very mushy vegetables.

Ingredients

3 lbs chuck steak, chopped into 1 1/2 inch cubes
1 lb red potatoes, cut into bite sized pieces
1 lb baby carrots
2 medium onions, coarsely chopped
1 cup thawed frozen peas
1 cup dry (and/or) full-bodied red wine 
2 cups low-sodium chicken broth
3 tbsp vegetable oil
3 tbsp flour
5 cloves garlic, minced or crushed
2 bay leaves
fresh or dried thyme, to taste
ground black pepper

If you are feeling up to the task, pearl onions are a wonderful addition to this stew.  I meant to try to add portabella mushrooms this time, but I forgot that I had them in the refrigerator.  I'm sure that they would be delicious, too.  A dutch oven would be perfect for this; alas I do not yet have one.

Preheat the oven to 300 degrees Fahrenheit.  Liberally season the beef with black pepper.  Heat 1 tbsp of vegetable oil over medium high heat until it has a lovely shimmer to it.  Working in batches, brown the meat on at least two sides.  Tongs are very helpful for this.  The reason you should work in batches is that if each cube of meat doesn't have a bit of breathing room around it, they will not brown.  Instead, they will steam, turn gray, and become tough.  It takes about 4 minutes for smaller cubes to brown, and I only flip them once (regardless of size).  Keep an eye on them; don't entirely rely on the timer.  About halfway through browning the beef, you will need to add another tbsp of oil to the pot.  Put the browned cubes in a bowl to the side once finished.

Now, turn the heat down to medium low, add the last tbsp of oil, and add your onions, scraping the bottom of the pot with a wooden spoon to dislodge all of the browned bits left over from the meat.  Once the onions have softened (about 4 to 5 minutes), add the garlic and stir for about 30 seconds.  In goes the flour.  Keep stirring and mixing everything together for another minute or two, at which point the flour should become a light brown.  Add the wine, stirring everything together and again scraping the bottom of the pot, until the wine begins to thicken.  At this point, gradually stir in the chicken broth.  Once all the liquid is in the pan, put your thyme and bay leaves in, and bring to a simmer.  Add the beef, carrots, and potatoes; stir and bring to a simmer once more.  Cover and put in the oven for two hours.

At the end of the two hours, take the pot out of the oven and stir in the frozen peas.  After about five minutes, the stew will be ready to serve.  Enjoy!

PS- This recipe works very well for venison stew meat as well.  I treated the venison in almost the same manner; browning time was decreased by a couple of minutes, and I allowed the stew to cook for three instead of two hours.  All other steps were identical, and the results were fantastically delicious!

Hearty Chicken Soup

It's a chilly October morning, and Andrew, my significant other, is suffering from one of the many autumn viruses going around.  As it happens, I know the perfect cure- chicken soup (and decongestant).  I was also looking for an excuse to make a soup that isn't usually on my menu.  I looked at a few recipes for ideas, including in my Cook's Illustrated: The New Best Recipe cookbook.  I really do love my Cook's Illustrated cookbook, but sometimes they get a little too scientific for me.  I also didn't feel up to the task of making my own chicken stock- as much as I enjoy cooking (and eating the results), I didn't want to be in the kitchen all day.  I finally went with one of the Pioneer Woman's recipes as a base, although I did change it up a bit.

I chose chicken thighs over a whole chicken for several reasons.  Working with a whole chicken is unwieldy, whereas smaller bits are easier to deal with.  Dark meat (to me, anyway) is more tender, more flavorful, and far more juicy.  I knew I was going to get a very rich broth from all of those thighs.  If you choose to follow my lead, you do want the skin-on and bone-in thighs, as both skin (high in fat) and bone (delicious marrow flavor) contribute a lot to the end product.  Another bonus: chicken thighs are much cheaper to buy than a whole chicken.  I must give credit to Andrew for pointing all of these things out even through a congested haze, because I was originally going to just buy what all of the other recipes had suggested.  I used roughly three or four pounds of chicken thighs and saved two for Andrew to make his famous chicken sandwiches.

I'm sure you would like to know what the rest of the ingredients are:

-10 ounces Swanson's unsalted chicken broth
-1 large turnip, peeled and chopped into bite-size pieces
-4 whole carrots, sliced
-4 celery ribs, chopped
-2 small onions or 1 large onion, diced
-1 cup uncooked barley
-1 tbsp cumin
-dash of oregano
-bundle of fresh herbs (in this case thyme, sage, and basil) tied together with cooking twine
-4 cloves fresh garlic, crushed
-1 bay leaf
-enough water to cover all ingredients if broth does not prove to be enough liquid to do so

One ingredient that I would have liked to add is ground black pepper, and there is a quite simple explanation for why there is not any present: I forgot to pick up more whilst out shopping.  It is always a terrible feeling as one drives away from the store and remembers that they forgot something rather crucial.  However, this soup proves that one does not need black pepper to create an amazingly comforting and delicious soup.  I would also like to point out that there is NO added salt- none whatsoever, and it was not missed.

I briefly toyed with the idea of roasting the vegetables to bring out more flavor, but was feeling so lazy as to not even saute them in the stockpot first.  I simply put everything except the barley into the pot, covered it all with a combination of chicken broth and water, and gave it a stir.  After the soup came to a boil, I turned the heat down to a simmer, and let the simmering liquid do its magic for two hours.  At this point, I removed the chicken thighs with a slotted spoon, as well as the bundle of fresh herbs, which was disintegrating.  If the chicken is not yet tender enough where the skin is falling off of the meat and the meat is falling off of the bone, it needs more time.  I set the chicken aside to cool down to the point where I could remove the meat from the bone by hand, and added my cup of barley to the still simmering vegetables and broth.  It takes 45 minutes for the barley to be ready, and that is plenty of time for the chicken to cool down and for me to separate the meat from the skin and bones.  I shredded the chicken meat into nice bite-sized chunks and put it back into the soup.  Once the barley was ready (it expands to several times its original size, and ought to be only slightly chewy), the soup was done.  Despite my avoidance of doing anything extra fancy with the ingredients, it turned out to be one of the tastiest soups that I have ever made.