Smoky Pork and Bean Soup

This Smoky Pork and Bean Soup is easy, tasty and smells just wonderful as it fills your home!

I asked the meat department at my local grocery store to cut me a bone-in 3lb pork shoulder roast.  If I had enough time, I would have slow cooked this roast in a crock pot the day before, so the meat would just fall off in shreds.  But, no time so I seasoned the roast with Kosher salt, garlic powder and pepper.  Then I baked it at 350 for about two hours.

It should turn out like this.  Cut all the meat off the bone and discard the fattiest parts.  (No one wants to take a bite of fat in a soup.  Ewww.)  Cut into bite size pieces.

While the roast is cooking, you can start the beans.  You want to rinse them off first, then boil for 2 minutes, remove from heat, cover and let stand for 1 hour.

While the beans are soaking, prepare your ingredients.  The secret to this soup is Liquid Smoke.  Used sparingly in most recipes, but not this one.  I used 4 Tablespoons.  It gives the soup a warm, full, smoky flavor.

Deceptively filling and flavored with ham hocks, pork shoulder roast, fresh thyme, onion, bay leaves, carrots and liquid smoke, this soup has easily made its way into my recipe box permanently.

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for the recipe

Yankee Pot Roast Soup

There is this little hole-in-the wall soup kitchen several blocks down from my office.  Since we discovered it, the girls I work with and I have gone there every single day for lunch.  Every SINGLE day.  One day I tried their Yankee Pot Roast soup, and it was the very best soup I had EVER tasted!

The next morning, I called them and asked if they'd share their recipe with me.  His response to me was "You're out of your mind!"  I suppose you don't get to ask a local fave what's in their recipes :) !  He did share with me what the secret ingredient was though.. .we'll get to that later...

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for the recipe

I could tell most of what was in the soup just by eating it... cubed pot roast, celery, onions, carrots, potatoes, thyme and pepper.

Start by browning the meat in some butter.  I seasoned it liberally with onion salt, garlic powder, pepper and Worcestershire sauce.

Pour off all of the fat and add in your vegetables, thyme, and some salt and pepper.  Then, add the beef broth and mix everything together.

Time for the secret ingredient:

I would never have guessed or thought to add cream to a beef broth based soup.  I am so glad that he decided to share their secret ingredient with me!

The cream makes the soup a tad richer than just plain beef broth, and really brings all the flavors together.  This is what it will look like when all the vegetables have cooked down and it's ready to serve.

I served this with just plain french bread... it was fabulous!