The Scrappy Housewife Cooks: Ham and Potato Soup (A Favorite!)

We found this user submitted recipe on Cooking.com and we use it often at our house. You can find it HERE. We first used it when trying to find a new use for our leftover Christmas ham. It's quick, hearty and makes quite a bit for two people. Adam gets all the credit for picking it out. Shh - don't tell him I said that. ;) xoxo - Christina

Here is a basic recipe for Ham & Potato soup. One of the things that I enjoy about this recipe is the flexibility. It's very easy to adjust portion sizes depending on how many mouths you are feeding. And it easily allows for you to make your own modifications to suit your tastes. It is what I would call a “foundation” recipe that allows you to build other ideas on to it.

INGREDIENTS

6 medium potatoes

1 large onion

2 cans green beans

Leftover bone and ham

Salt

Pepper

DIRECTIONS

1. Peel and cut potatoes into large chunks.

Place potatoes in bottom of stockpot or Dutch oven. (This is where you have

flexibility for how much you want to make. You want to be able to cover the

bottom of the pot with the potatoes. So, if you want to make more, add more

potatoes or, vice versa, a smaller pot and less potatoes.)

2. Add enough water to cover the potatoes.

Add salt and pepper to taste. (This is the basic recipe. But there is much flexibility here for adding different spices, depending on your desire. I can easily see adding some heat here in the form of tabasco.)

3. Chop onion and add on top of potatoes.

4. Remove ham from bone. Nestle bone down in potatoes. (You can easily do this recipe without the bone, if you only have leftover ham. This is how I made it last night. It is tasty, either way.)

5. Cut ham into bite size pieces and layer on top. (As can be seen, we used leftover ham that we kept in the freezer since Christmas. But it doesn’t necessarily have to be frozen. If you are going to use ham from the freezer, though, I would suggest removing ham from the bone and cutting into pieces before freezing. We saved the ham in various forms … cut up for soup, steaks, etc. … to allow us some flexibility.)

6. Pour green beans on top of ham. (When you are opening the beans, you can either drain the liquid from the cans before adding to the pot or just add the liquid with the rest. This would depend on whether you want to serve as a soup or on a plate. It can also depend on your personal taste, as well.)