Mom always called it Navy pea bean soup, I’m not sure what the beans are really called. You ever see a family of six try to gut each other with spoons fighting over soup?
Mom’s other specialty was baked mac & cheese casserole with ham; butter-soaked croutons on top… croutons, mmmmmmmm.
I make this, in my little food chopper. Not too fine so that it’s a paste! I sometimes add a bit of onion and either dill or sweet pickles. Mix with mayonnaise and maybe a little hot mustard, it’s so good in a sandwich or as a dip for crackers. A sandwich or a wrap with a schmear of pimento cheese - even better!
One time, my folks found a huge ham bone with some attached meat in the very back of the freezer. It had been there at least two years. They made a huge pot of bean soup, the proviso being we should be able to tell if the ham had gone bad by the smell of the soup. If the soup was rank, we were heading out to the pizza parlor.
So, I made ham salad for lunch today. I have to say, I’m not really a fan. I mean, I still ate it because it was palatable enough and I didn’t want it to go to waste, but it was a bit on the sweet side for my taste. Admittedly that may have been at least partly my fault, as I just dumped in some sweet pickle relish when I was making it, and may have overdone it.
Take a good non-stick frying pan. Lightly brown some ham.
Put aside.
Add like a cube or 2 of butter (depends on the size of the bread), when melted place sourdough bread down, with the fried ham on one slice and good cheddar cheese on the other. Cover, but check often- when the cheese shows signs of melting, carefully put the cheese half over the ham half. Cover, turn off heat. Wait for a few minute for cheese to melt.
If it’s sweet, yes you done overdone the sweet pickle relish. We did a more Eastern European ham salad growing up which has mayo, eggs, sometimes peas, ham, onion, salt, pepper. No relish or pickle of any sort.
Well, I did add celery and onion, and the aforementioned relish. Although I would say a salad is anything made of cold ingredients and a dressing, so it would count either way. But that probably belongs in the other thread.
Yeah, I was loosely following a recipe I found online, which used bread and butter pickles. I didn’t have those, so I figured my options were to substitute the relish, dill pickle, or leave out the pickle altogether. In hindsight I should have gone with one of the other options.
1 - if you also have leftover chicken or turkey: ham & chicken/turkey crepes
2 - chicken cordon bleu (chicken breast stuffed with ham and Swiss cheese), although I also make what Sizzler used to call “Malibu chicken”, where the cheese and ham are baked on top of the chicken. Be warned; it does tend to melt the cheese into the chicken rather than leaving it on top, so if you do try this, I suggest waiting until just before the chicken is finished to add the cheese and ham.
Thank you for that suggestion, and I think we have a winner. In my college days I used to buy frozen chicken cordon bleu that you just heated up in the oven, but I’ve never tried to make it myself before. I think I will try this weekend.