Easy to make and budget-friendly, this Old-fashioned Navy Bean Soup with ham makes a hearty, comforting meal. It’s also an excellent way to use that leftover hambone from your holiday dinner!
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This Old-fashioned Navy Bean Soup recipe is easy, adaptable, and very forgiving. It’s budget- and pantry-friendly, too; to make it, you just need a hambone (and/or leftover ham), a few basic vegetables, and a pound of beans. With that, you can easily feed small crowd with leftovers to spare.
Serve Navy Bean Soup with fresh skillet cornbread, buttermilk biscuits, or a slice of sourdough for a simple, delicious, satisfying meal.
How to Make Old-Fashioned Navy Bean Soup in a Slow Cooker
[Scroll down for printable Recipe Card and step-by-step directions.]
Soak beans overnight, or do a quick soak.
Drain and rinse soaked beans, and combine with diced celery, grated carrot, and chopped onions in your slow cooker.
Using a Hambone in your Navy Bean Soup
If you are using a ham bone, put it in the slow cooker now, too.
When using a hambone (and I HIGHLY recommend that you do) DO NOT add any salt to your Navy Bean Soup until after the first 5 hours of cooking. Ham bones are notoriously salty, and it is easier to know how much salt to add once the ham bone has cooked out into the soup.
Ham Juice = Liquid Gold!
Pan juices (“Ham Juice,” in this case) is the liquid that collects in the bottom of your roasting pan when you are cooking or reheating a roast or other large cut of meat. It is also one of my favorite Secret Ingredients!
If you use pan juices in your soup, it’s best to refrigerate them for at least four hours, until very cold. Then, using a fine mesh sieve, strain the pan juices to filter out any fat solids and other bits you might not want in your soup. Add enough water to the pan juices to make a total of 2 quarts of liquid, and then add all the liquid to the ingredients in the slow cooker.
- If you DO use pan juices as part of your liquid, hold off on adding any additional seasoning until after the first 5 hours.
- If you DO NOT use pan juices as part of your liquid, add the brown sugar and black pepper from the ingredient list at this time.
Just as the type of ham bone you use will determine the underlying flavor profile of your soup (i.e., sweet, smokey, etc.), so too will your pan juices. For example, we usually have a honey-glazed ham for the holidays, and then make either navy bean or split pea soup right after, so our post-holiday soups generally have a slightly sweet undertone.
After you have loaded everything in the slow cooker, give it all a quick stir. Add the crushed chili peppers at this time if you are using them. Set slow cooker to HIGH and cook for 5 hours. I usually stir the soup a couple of times during the cooking time.
After about 5 hours cooking time.
After cooking for 5 hours, the meat on the ham-bone should be falling apart. Reduce the slow cooker to LOW.
Using tongs or an extra-large serving spoon, carefully remove ham bone to a plate and set aside to cool. (Give it some time! I’ve burnt my fingers more than once trying to hurry the process.)
After you have removed the ham bone, taste the soup broth, and then salt and season to taste. Add fresh thyme if desired. (Or any other fresh herbs you choose to use.)
Allow soup to continue to simmer on low while ham bone cools, checking every 30 minutes until the beans are done to your liking. Beans are usually done in 6 to 8 hours.
For a creamier bean soup, when the beans are fully cooked, use an emersion blender to blend some of the beans a bit. (Be sure to do this BEFORE you add any ham back into the soup.)
When the beans are fully cooked and the hambone is cool enough to handle, separate the meat from the bone. Return the meat to the soup, and discard the ham bone. Add any additional ham to soup, taste again, and adjust the seasonings.
Violà! You’ve made this hearty, delicious Old-fashioned Navy Bean Soup for the whole family with only about 20 minutes of hands-on time!
Arugula sprouts are my new favorite micro-green! Use them to garnish your soups to add a little contrast of color, plus a fresh, mildly peppery accent.
As with most soups, Navy Bean Soup is always better the next day, when the flavors have had a chance to meld.
Beans, Beans!
I’ll bet I know what you’re thinking right now! (They are magical, aren’t they?!)
What kind of beans can I use for this recipe?
This recipe is technically for Old-fashioned Navy Bean Soup, and thus calls for using dried navy beans. Also known as “Boston beans”, these small, cream-colored oval beans are a standard in American cooking. Navy beans work well as a soup bean because they can be pureed, or cooked to a very soft consistency.
However, there is nothing to stop you from using an “alternative bean.” You could make this recipe into Old-fashioned Calypso Bean Soup, or Old-fashioned Great Northern Bean Soup, or even Old-fashioned West African Brown Bean Soup. All you really need is a pound of any small bean, or combination of beans.
(Note that changing the type of bean may affect the soup’s cooking time.)
To Presoak or Not Presoak
This recipe calls for you to presoak your beans before starting your soup. There are basically three way to do this:
- Long Soak (Overnight): Rinse the beans under cool, running water and remove any stones or shriveled beans. Transfer beans to a large bowl, and cover with enough water so that there is 2 inches of water above the beans. Let sit overnight. Drain and rinse thoroughly before cooking.
- Quick Soak (Stovetop): In a large saucepan, cover dried beans with triple their volume of cold water. Bring water to a boil and cook beans, uncovered, for 2 minutes over medium heat. Remove pan from heat, cover, and soak beans for 1 hour.
- Quick Soak (Instant Pot): I’m not a big Instant Pot user; however, when I do presoak my beans in my Instant Pot (and I have a couple of times) these are the directions I follow.
Do I haf’ta presoak the beans?
No.
So, why should I presoak my beans?
There are a couple of good reasons to presoak beans. First, soaking can reduce overall cooking time considerably. Presoaked beans also tend to hold their shape better. On the down-side, dark-skinned beans, speckled beans, and mottled beans will loose color in a presoak; and soaking does leach out some nutrients.
However, reduced cooking time or improved texture is not the primary reason I presoak my beans before cooking them. No, the main reason I soak my beans first is because doing so helps remove some of the indigestible complex sugars in them that cause gas. In fact, if you have a difficult relationship with beans, you may find that presoaking all your beans before cooking changes that relationship noticeably for the better.
Let me translate that into the clearest possible terms: if you presoak your beans and thoroughly drain and rinse them before cooking, you and the people who eat your food will (probably) fart less.
(My mother would be doing somersaults in her grave if she knew I was writing about Gas.)
But it is a totally true, and I have years of anecdotal evidence to back it up. Which is to say, I live with people (not naming any names or anything) who have more trouble than some digesting those aforementioned “indigestible complex sugars.” (In other words, they are very gassy.) I have noticed that, after eating a soup or chili made with thoroughly presoaked beans, the incidence of button dropping (as Mr. B’s Granny used to call it; as in, “Oops! I dropped a button.”) does seem to be less than after eating, say, a bowl of canned chili.
Note that presoaking your beans does not mean an end to button dropping, as it were; rather, it means there will likely be less incidents if you do.
That’s probably all I need to say about that.
Hearty, comforting, easy, economical, and even pantry-friendly! Oh, and it's De-licious, too! There's a lot to love about this Slow Cooker Navy Bean & Ham Soup!
Old-fashioned Navy Bean Soup {Slow Cooker}
Equipment
- Fine Mesh Sieve
Ingredients
- 1 pound navy beans
- 1 meaty ham bone
- 1 cup ham More or less. Use meat from hambone, plus any additional ham you want to add.
- 1 ½ cups chopped onion about one large onion
- 1 cup grated carrots or finely diced
- 1 cup finely diced celery 2 stalks
- 1 ½ tablespoons brown sugar or honey
- 1 teaspoon salt or as needed
- 1/2 teaspoon white pepper or freshly ground black pepper
- Pan juices from ham OPTIONAL; 16-24 ounces
- 2 quarts water* water + pan juices = 1 ½ to 2 quarts of liquid
- ½ - 1 teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes optional
- sprig fresh thyme optional
Instructions
- Soak beans overnight, or do a quick soak.
- Drain and rinse soaked beans.
- Combine drained, soaked beans with diced celery, grated carrot, and chopped onions in slow cooker.
Using pan juices in your soup
- If you are using pan juices (i.e.,ham juice from the bottom of the roasting pan):Refrigerate pan juices for at least four hours, until very cold.Using a fine mesh sieve, strain the pan juices to filter out any fat solids and other bits you might not want in your soup.Use 16-24 ounces of pan juices in your soup; less if your ham was particularly salty or the juices very thick.Add enough water to the pan juices to make a total of 1½ to 2 quarts of liquid, depending upon how thick you like your soup. (i.e., more liquid = thinner soup) Add liquid to the ingredients in the slow cooker.If you DO use pan juices as part of your liquid: Hold off on adding any additional seasoning until after the first 4 hours.If you DO NOT use pan juices as part of your liquid: Add the brown sugar and black pepper at this time.DO NOT add any salt to your Navy Bean Soup at this time. Ham bones are notoriously salty, and it is easier to know how much salt to add once the ham bone has cooked out into the soup.
Cooking the Soup
- Give everything in the slow cooker a quick stir. Add the crushed chili peppers at this time if you are using them. Set slow cooker to HIGH and cook for 5 hours. I usually stir the soup a couple of times during the cooking time.
- After cooking for 5 hours, the meat on the ham-bone should be falling apart. Using tongs or an extra-large serving spoon, carefully remove ham bone to a plate and set aside to cool. Reduce the slow cooker to LOW. After you have removed the ham bone, taste the soup broth, and then season with salt and pepper to taste.
- Add fresh thyme if desired. (Or any other fresh herbs you choose to use.) Allow soup to continue to simmer on low while ham bone cools, checking every 30 minutes until the beans are done to your liking. Beans are usually done in 6 to 8 hours. For a creamier bean soup, when the beans are fully cooked, use an emersion blender to blend some of the beans a bit. (Be sure to do this BEFORE you add any ham back into the soup.)
- When the ham bone is cool enough to handle, separate the meat from the bone.
- Stir ham from bone into soup. Add any additional reserved ham at this time. Discard the ham bone.
- Season to taste.
Notes
Three Ways to Presoak Beans
- Long Soak (Overnight): Rinse the beans under cool, running water and remove any stones or shriveled beans. Transfer beans to a large bowl, and cover with enough water so that there is 2 inches of water above the beans. Let sit overnight. Drain and rinse thoroughly before cooking.
- Quick Soak (Stovetop): In a large saucepan, cover dried beans with triple their volume of cold water. Bring water to a boil and cook beans, uncovered, for 2 minutes over medium heat. Remove pan from heat, cover, and soak beans for 1 hour.
- Quick Soak (Instant Pot): I'm not a big Instant Pot user; however, if I were using an Instant Pot to cook my beans, these are the directions I would follow.
As with most soups, Navy Bean Soup is always better the next day, when the flavors have had a chance to meld.
Nutrition
Cooking Navy Bean Soup in an Instant Pot
While personally, I prefer cooking soups in my slow cooker, I am certain that you can cook this entire soup in an Instant Pot. So, if you successfully make this soup in your Instant Pot, please take a minute to share your settings in the comments below! I know that many of our readers would love to know!
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