Wow. I don’t put nearly that much ham in, but it’s by personal preference. When I make soup, as opposed to just beans and ham to eat with cornbread, I cook the beans with onions, A little garlic, diced carrots and celery and diced tomatoes. As far as firmness, I think the great northern beans get softer than navy beans. The skins don’t seem as hard to me.
Yeah!
Well it definitely isn’t short on the meaty side of things. One thing I noticed, by pressure cooking the beans, it speeds up the process obviously, but it doesn’t give long enough time for the flavors to “marry” and smooth out. It was good yesterday, but I let it simmer all night and today all the meat sloughed off the bones, and tried some tonite after feeding in some onions & Cheyenne pepper, black pepper, white pepper, etc around 8PM it’s fantastic.
I think I’ll buy a couple big cans of great northerns and drain and rinse those off, and feed these into the pot. Have several gallons worth. Should be good till April. Will report back!