Lentil Soup with Braised Ham Hock

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Speaker: Alright, today I am doing my version of lentil soup I like to do it with braised ham hock, really flavors the stock nicely and just a rich delicious winter soup. So you are going to get one pork smoked ham hock. Alright, that's basically the high and a shank of a pig, the lower ankle there and it takes a long time to braise, but it's totally worth it, very delicious flavor. We are going to simmer it in some stock. I'm going to go one quarter chicken stock and one quarter beef broth. So you can do at two quarters of any kind of liquid basically, but I am going to use half chicken, half beef here. So it's two quarters altogether. Alright, we are going to bring that up to a simmer. I am going to add some black pepper and a little bit of cayenne to taste, those about half a teaspoon. You are going to adjust all the stuff later of course with any soup. One bay leaf, and I think dry thyme is really nice with any kind of bean soup or lentils. I am going to go with some dry thyme, any kind of dryders is probably going to work here, one of your favorites. I am not adding salt okay, that's smoked ham hock could be salty. I don't know yet, but I want to taste later. Put the lid on and simmer that on low, for one hour and 30 minutes, see new improved graphics, one hour, 30 minutes. In that hour and 30 minutes, well the hock still is not tender, but it's starting to get there. The meat is starting to pull away from the bone, it's still very, very tough though. So it's going to need to cook for quite a while longer. But at this point we are going to add our mirepoix. Now, part of my French, but as you well know mirepoix is just celery, carrots and onions. It's usually two parts of onions, one part of celery, one part of carrot. So I did about two cups of onion, a cup of carrot, and a cup of celery just diced up. It doesn't had to exactly soup for God sake. So I will put in there veggies. We are going to cover this back up and we are going to simmer this for 30 more minutes. Okay, graphic please. Alright, so simmer that with the lid on for 30 minutes. What you are going to find 30 minutes later, okay the vegetables are pretty much cooked. Alright, the stock is just incredibly flavorful, the smell is unbelievable alright and some I gambled again. Alright, now we are going to add our lentils, two cups of green lentils, all kinds of lentils, green, yellow, red. So they all will work for this, I used green this time. We are going to put the lid on, alright get ready for graphic. 30 minutes covered, simmer for 30 more minutes on low. Now, you are going to take the lid off, the lentils are not going to be cooked yet. They take about 40 minutes, 45 minutes. But they are going to be close. But for the rest of the cooking alright, we are going to leave the lid off, if we want to reduce a little bit and we also -- you will see how that starts simmering, then it starts pushing the fat to the edges of the cattle. You can go and skin the oil that came up off the top and there about 20 minutes later, my lentils were pretty much hydrated. Alright, there is my pork hock bone, it's just the bone left. There is the skin that came off, alright and you can discard that skin if you want. Now, I am going to tell you though in some cultures where that would be considered almost a crime that skin would be probably fried up or roasted and served with the soup or as a separate dish. But anyway when I dish this up, I just took a couple of chunks of that beautiful succulent and soft ham hock meat and garnished my couple of lentils of lentil soup, the lentils perfectly tender. I have my aromatic vegetables, the mirepoix, little bit of fresh parsley and of course at the end I check for salt and pepper and what a great soup. So easy, I know it's convenient, you open that can of lentil soup, but it's a great excuse you pick up one of those ham hocks or pork, smoked pork hocks at the butcher and a couple of hours later you are eating an incredibly delicious soup. Hope you give that a try and enjoy and by the way this is our 100th video recipe.