Bean and chard soup

Bean soup with Swiss chard. 

I realized my last batch like this with bacon turned out a lot better by the addition of scant sugar. It changed everything. Sugar changed the beans and chard from dull to bright, from plain thud and serious to child-like precocious. A small amount makes a big difference.

Buckhorn Exchange, Denver's oldest restaurant, has the best bean soup I've ever tasted. It's worth going just for that but it's not all you'll want once you get there. So well liked that the owner graciously and generously offer their recipe so you can make it at home.

When you go there, you must order this if only for a taste.

Oh goodness. I just realized they cook everything for eight hours. 

No to that.

It's very simple. The only flavoring is, 

* ham

* chicken broth

* onion

* liquid smoke

* salt/pepper, duh, there's always that.

So, a very simple recipe and that is why it is so satisfying. There are no carrots in there trying to add color or sneaking in vegetables, or perhaps sweetness, no celery that would complete a mirepoix,  no corn, no chiles, no tomato, no garlic, no bay, no coriander, no cilantro, no oregano, no turmeric, nothing exotic, nothing unusual, none of the customary suspects. 

Why do they use ham and chicken broth? For substance. For a base. They didn't have a ham bone for every batch of bean soup like we do. If they had more ham then they'd use it, but they don't so they use the next best thing, a substitute, something blank that will contribute substance but won't interfere with intrusive flavor. 

But we have a very good ham bone. A couple in fact. A ham joint. We have something they don't. Good as their bean soup is, and it is very good, ours will be better because ours will be loaded with substance, all that marrow, all that aspic, far more than their chicken broth can provide. Plus we'll have even more ham besides. And with chicken broth there is a broad range with their substance. The best most substantial I can have is my own chicken broth, the best I can buy is frozen, and nearby but that is not available to everyone. The next best is in cartons and the worst is in tins, and the worst of the worst in cubes, but this recipe does not specify what type of chicken broth to add other than 1 oz suggesting a chicken broth paste as chefs sometimes use. 

Why cook beans for eight hours? They're dry and they take long to soak. They will absorb the flavors in the liquid as they swell and cook.

We soak and swell our beans before starting. Soaking beans is the pre-start. They're soaked overnight in water and triple their bulk.

Our ham bone is pressure cooked on high to force out the marrow into the water. This is done within half an hour.

Our soaked beans cook with everything except chard under low pressure. The bones cook again with the beans so all the flavors get shoved into each other, by pressure the flavors exchange. This time low pressure.

The pressure pot opened again and the Swiss chard added to the pot. Heated a third time to lowest of pressures then turned off. This pressure pot uses much less electricity altogether, and heck of a lot less when compared with eight hours of bean cooking. The chard hardly cooks at all, but it does cook under brief pressure. Now it is done, completed and commingled within an hour and as if it had cooked a third of a day. 

*1/2 bag white beans (this bone could have flavored enough for 5 LBS or more beans)

* large onion diced

* 2 smashed garlic cloves, diced

* bay leaves

* 1 teaspoon sugar

* 1/3 teaspoon chile flakes

* 1/2 teaspoon cumin

This version is not a particularly beany soup. Here, beans share the glory with Swiss chard and especially with the honey baked ham. This soup is trifecta of soaring glory testament to bean cooperation, of bean-chard-ham symtriosis, and not one-dimensional homey bean goodness.