I claim that if beans were not cheap and plentiful, bean soup could be sold as as an expensive delicacy. It is that good. Best yet, it is in the category of cheap great food that is easy to prepare.

For this exercise I started with Bob’s Red Mill 13 Bean Soup, which is a bag of mixed dried beans. My motivations for the choice were that (a) Bob did well with his 8 Grain Hot Cereal, previously “reviewed”: and (b) I thought the mix would photograph well.

While other mixtures might not photograph as well, I suspect that many combinations of a few types of large and small types of dried beans would taste fine. I followed the recipe on the package: soak two cups of beans overnight; boil in two and half quarts of water with a ham hock for three and a half hours; add a 15 ounce can of diced tomatoes, a chopped onion, and a tablespoon of chili; then simmer for another 30 minutes.

Boiling the ham bone starts out as appealing as a sink that needs draining:

It looks a lot better after the tomatoes have been added.

Chef Mario Batelli points out that there is no point in using fresh tomatoes in a dish that calls for the tomatoes to be cooked. Canned tomatoes are cooked, so there is no advantage in avoiding cooked tomatoes if you are going to cook them anyway. Tomatoes bring some acid to the soup. Acid is what makes flavors bright, something that beans need. Lemon or limes go well in bean soup too.

I added another tablespoon of chili to my soup and some diced ham. The ham on the ham bone has most of the flavor boiled out of it, so I take out the ham hock and put in the diced ham for the last thirty minutes. Notice there is no added salt in the recipe; the salt comes out of the ham. If the ham is not too salty, it may need a little more.

“You say this is thirteen bean soup? Odd, I can only taste twelve.”