After the indulgent Thanksgiving fare, we always seek out a dinner that is more wholesome and straightforward. That is definitely the case with these Creamy Northern Beans with Ham!
I combined the ingredients in the slow cooker and cooked them for eight hours. The outcome was a creamy, flavorful pot of beans with tender, delectable ham chunks.
You can serve this dish with some cornbread to make the ideal hearty dinner for a chilly fall evening.
The original recipe calls for a ham hock, but I use cubed smoked ham that is one inch in size instead. A ham hock usually makes the beans greasy, and it can be difficult to skim all that fat off, in my experience.
If you don’t have any leftover ham from Thanksgiving, visit your neighborhood deli and order a pound of smoked ham that has been cut into 1-inch pieces. When you get home, cut it into pieces and combine it with the beans.
I remember my mother’s cooking when I eat these delicious Creamy Northern Beans with Ham. Pure comfort food at its best that leaves you satisfied. My mother passed away in 2009, but I was fortunate enough to inherit her recipe box and cookbooks, which contained handwritten notes. Priceless!.
Use only the small amount of cloves specified in the recipe. It doesn’t overpower and gives the creamy beans a nice flavor depth.
I really hope you’ll give these a shot because they’re so easy to make and fantastic for a nice dinner. After a few days, they even appear to get better and better.
To prepare this recipe, you don’t even need to wait until Thanksgiving or for cooler weather. Theyre awesome all year round.
More Bean Recipes to Love:
Ham and Bean Crockpot Soup (using Leftover Ham)
The Best Great Northern Beans Recipe
Cooked beans aren’t typically the most exciting side dish, it can be said. Fortunately, this dish of great northern beans is so flavorful that it will stand out as the highlight of the meal.
Now, if you’ve never heard of great northern beans, they resemble navy beans quite a bit, with the exception that they are bigger (roughly the size of pinto beans) and have a thin skin. Additionally, because of their mild flavor, they absorb any flavors that are used when cooking them.
This recipe instructs you to prepare our great northern beans in a slow cooker with smoked ham, garlic, onion, herbs, cloves, and chicken broth. Everyone who tries the finished cooked beans will adore their pleasant, smoky, savory flavor.
These cooked beans are delicious and incredibly simple to prepare. All you need to do is add all the ingredients to your slow cooker and let them cook to perfection after soaking the dried beans overnight.
Then, in roughly 8 hours, or less if using an Instant Pot, you’ll have a delicious and nutritious side dish that pairs well with almost anything.
This braised beef recipe, this ham loaf, and this cube steak are all excellent choices if you’re looking for a tasty main dish to serve these beans next to. We occasionally do that at our house, but of course you can also eat these beans and ham as a main dish all by themselves.
So only a few simple, readily available ingredients are needed for this ham and bean recipe. Depending on the ingredients you have on hand, there is also plenty of room to change this recipe.
The ingredients you will need to make these great northern beans are as follows:
See what I mean? Super simple.
Additionally, I actually make this ham and bean soup and these butter beans with many of the same ingredients, so be sure to check out those recipes for two more delectable bean dishes!
Currently, when making smoked ham, I particularly enjoy using ham hock when I can find it. Ham hock is frequently added to soups and stews and typically comes smoked. In addition, ham hocks become incredibly tender and delicious when cooked for a long time.
I occasionally like to add canned diced tomatoes or fresh vegetables to this recipe, but you can also do without them.
Last but not least, if you don’t have a full pound of dried great northern beans, you can use white beans or even navy beans in place of them.
Anyway, lets get cooking these great northern beans.