Leftover Hambone Soup
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Use up your leftover hambone to make this cozy, hearty soup loaded with tons of veggies and chunks of sweet ham!
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Why You’ll Love This HamBone Soup Recipe
- Repurposes leftover holiday hambone
- Makes for an amazing, flavorful ham stock
- Warm, cozy, hearty, hug-in-a-bowl vibes
- Great clean-out-the-fridge meal, adding in leftover vegetables and extra herbs
Tips for the Best Leftover HamBone Soup
- Use a leftover ham bone from Christmas or Easter dinner. Simmering the hambone in a Dutch oven extracts collagen and creates a flavorful ham stock that makes this soup rich and hearty. It’s the secret to the best hambone soup recipe.
- Add pasta. Add ditalini, macaroni or a small shape pasta for a heartier soup.
- Add in leafy greens. This is a great recipe to sneak in leafy greens for those picky eaters. Spinach, kale, collard greens, swiss chard, or arugula are all great options.
- Serve with crusty bread. Serve with all the homemade crusty bread for dipping, sopping and dunking!
- Freeze as needed. Hambone soup is a great recipe to freeze, perfect for a quick, cozy weeknight meal in the coming weeks. Always use airtight, resealable freezer bags, label, date and freeze up to 3 months.
Best Sides to Serve with HamBone Soup
Tools For This Recipe
Dutch oven
Leftover Hambone Soup: Frequently Asked Questions
Yes, you can absolutely make ham soup without the hambone. It won’t be quite as rich, but it will still be a great way to use up leftover ham!
Absolutely! But because dried herbs are often more potent/concentrated than fresh herbs, you need less when using dry. The correct ratio is 1 tablespoon fresh herbs to 1 teaspoon dried herbs.
Absolutely! We have a recipe for that here.
Leftovers can be stored in an airtight container in the fridge for 3-4 days.
Yes! Leftover hambone soup can be kept in the freezer for up to 3 months.
Leftover Hambone Soup
Video
Ingredients
- 1 leftover hambone
- 1 tablespoon olive oil
- 3 cloves garlic, minced
- 1 onion, diced
- 2 carrots, peeled and diced
- 1 russet potato, peeled and diced
- 1 cup canned white kidney beans, drained and rinsed
- ¾ cup frozen corn kernels
- ¾ teaspoon fresh thyme leaves
- 2 bay leaves
- Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper, to taste
- 1 ½ cups leftover diced ham
Equipment
Instructions
- Place leftover hambone in a large stockpot or Dutch oven and add enough water to cover the bone halfway, about 6-7 cups. Bring to a boil; reduce heat and simmer until very fragrant, about 30 minutes to 1 hour; set aside ham stock and discard hambone.
- Heat olive oil in the large stockpot or Dutch oven over medium heat. Add garlic, onion, carrots and potato. Cook, stirring occasionally, until onions have become translucent, about 2-3 minutes.
- Stir in ham stock, beans, corn, thyme and bay leaves; season with salt and pepper, to taste.
- Bring to a boil; reduce heat and simmer until potatoes are tender, about 10-12 minutes. Stir in ham until heated through, about 1-2 minutes.
- Serve immediately.
Did you make this recipe?
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This soup has been a post-Christmas staple since I started making ham for Christmas dinner in 2013. I just made it again today for the 5th year running. We don’t eat a lot of ham outside of the holiday, but I look forward to this soup every year in early January, and I usually make enough so that we can freeze a batch for sometime in Feb or March, too. It’s 9 degrees here in Ohio with negative temps predicted for tomorrow. I made a large pot of the soup so we will have it tonight and tomorrow, at least, then one more time later this winter. I have always made the recipe as written and it is just outstanding. I follow your blog and Pinterest page and have made many of your recipes – never made one I didn’t enjoy, but this one is among my top 3!! Thank you!
Would this be good with black eyed peas?
Yes, absolutely!
Used my leftover ham bone [ham tasted great] and followed recipe exactly . It was very bland. what did I do wrong. Have tried some of your other recipes Great!
It’s hard to say – did you season the soup?
I have making this soup for years! It is one if my favorites. I used to throw away hambones…gasp… because I they were only good for mushy split pea soup. Thank you.
I have ham but no ham bone. Any suggestions on how to make this without the ham bone?
Unfortunately, without further recipe testing, I cannot answer with certainty. As always, please use your best judgment regarding substitutions and modifications.
Another good used of a leftover ham is dumplings. My family like the ham dumplings better than chicken dumplings. I will definitely making this soup!
Great soup. Traded out the kidney beans for navy beans and the corn with ditalini pasta. Because of the pasta addition I added more water when making the stock. Came out great. This soup is very easily adaptable to varied tastes.
Hi, I am making the ham stock ahead of time so I can chill it and remove the excess fat, I want to triple this recipe, to do the ham stock broth would I just add the triple amount of water (18-21 cups) or would you recommend me just doing the 6-7 cups of water and then adding more later on?
Also do you think I could triple the recipe with just one ham bone?
Unfortunately, without further recipe testing, I cannot answer with certainty. As always, please use your best judgment regarding substitutions and modifications.
18 -21 cups of water vs. 6 -7. I would think that would water down you’re broth a bit, 12-14 cups is a lot. Adding that much more water to kool-aid or sun tea would be a huge difference without more teabags or surgar and flavor pack.
But it may not depending on the size of the bone, maybe stopping by the local butcher or grocery store butcher, he may have one…just a thought.
I love cooking at home and finding delicious recipes I can make for my son. My grandma always use to make soups and I am know addicted to making them too! This recipe was really simple but the flavors came together nicely. I followed it to the T, except for the white kidney beans(I used navy beans) and found it to be delightful. I also toasted torn pieces bread with a little olive oil to add as a topping for a little texture. Great recipe to add to the pile-Thanks
I made this today. I found it to be delicious but a tad too sweet from the ham. I used a leftover Honeybaked ham bone. I did add zucchini (needed to see some green and little chopped red bell pepper. It’s very good!
this was damn delicious! i actually said that while telling my sister about the recipe! i didn’t have the
beans, and was still great!
This came out awesome! The only thing I did differently was add peas and about 1 tsp or so ground cloves. The salt from the ham was plenty, it needed no additional salt. Thanks for the great recipe.
This is a wonderful soup! It has become our New Year’s Day soup, using the leftover ham bone from Christmas dinner. Every year since then, our extended family comments on how much they look forward to it and how good it is! This year, going off of some other reviews, I’m trying out slow cooking the ham bone for 18 hours to get a good bone broth. It took 8.5 cups of liquid (including 2.5 c. low sodium veggie broth and the rest was filtered water) to cover the ham bone completely. I added onion powder, garlic powder, pepper, dried rosemary and thyme and set it to low. As for veggies, I plan to follow the recipe with the exception of carrots; I’ll probably add peas instead. Also, I’ll add some extra garlic and onion, and gold potatoes instead of russet. I plan on taste testing before adding any salt to make sure it isn’t too salty. Of course, we still have some leftover pineapple brown sugar glazed ham we will add to it near the end. Hoping this version turns out just as good as the prior years! Happy New Year to All!
Ok. Hilarious to use Kosher salt in hambone soup.
What’s “hilarious” about it? Kosher salt is a name, the product itself isn’t usually “kosher” in the Jewish sense (although it is possible for there to be kosher kosher salt). There’s no irony in using kosher salt in a recipe containing pork.
Loved it. Made a couple of changes – used acorn squash instead of potatoes, used garbanzos (chick peas) instead of kidney beans and added leftover green beans (w/ bacon).
Hi Chungha , Your soup looks very good. I always make soup from ham bones and will be making it from my turkey carcass again to. I love making soups, I find it very relaxing and satisfying. I make Potatoes, Clam Chowder, Veg Beef, Beef n’ barley, Italian sausage, kale and white bean, lemon rice, wonton soup, ….love making soup….so healthy and cleans out the fridge to..lol. Happy New Year everyone.
Would this taste OK using the hambone from a honeybaked ham?
Yes, absolutely!
That is a fantastic way to use leftover ham. Nice work (:
Looks so yummy and healthy. Thanks for sharing. Happy New Year!
This soup looks so good. I just made some stock from my ham bone and I’m going to make the soup tomorrow. What do you think about substituting butternut squash for the potato? Would it completely change the taste?
Not at all!
I made this last night and it was very good. First of all, to answer Gina’s question, you can use a pressure cooker. I used a 6 quart pressure cooker and a large very meaty ham bone. I added water to cover the bone and cooked it for an hour. I opened it up and added the veggies and then cooked for 45 more minutes. I used two cans of Great Northern white beans in lieu of a potato. I left out the corn. I did not add any additional ham since mine had so much meat on it which just fell off the bone. I used a gravy separator to reduce the amount of fat in the broth. The outcome was all that I hoped for. Served it with home made corn bread and it made for a great dinner! I recommend this recipe with or without the minor variations mentioned.