Ham Green Bean and Potato Soup

Pair this ham and green bean soup with my Cajun Ham and Cheese Biscuits, a Cranberry Apple Blue Cheese Salad, and some Chewy Chocolate Espresso Cookies for a sweet treat!

★ Why You'll Love this Recipe ★

This old fashioned soup is simple to make using ham, green beans and potatoes in a creamy broth. A great little dinner for when you're short on time but really want something hearty and balanced.

Great use for leftover ham.

You can make this soup using leftover or packaged ham making this a quick an easy meal and a perfect use for holiday ham remnants.

I like to use diced ham if I'm not starting with leftovers. It's affordable, I like the texture the finely diced ham adds to the soup, and it's easy! Just open the package and dump it in.

However, if I have some leftover ham, it's worth the little bit of extra effort to chop it up because using leftover ham, it's typically a higher quality ham and therefore you're going to get a little more flavor.

Don't throw away your ham bone!

And bonus, you sometimes get the ham bone which you can drop right into your soup as its cooks to really enhance the flavor even future.

You do not need a ham bone, but if you've got one, then you should definitely use it to add some flavor to your broth. Don't let it go to waste!

A Complete Dinner in a Bowl!

This ham, potato and green bean soup reminds me of an entire ham dinner all in one bowl. You've got you meat veggies and a starch. No need to make anything else! You could pair this up with a side salad, some crusty bread or a roasted veggie though if you wanted.

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★ Tips & FAQs ★

Use frozen, fresh or canned green beans.

I'll be honest. I love canned green beans. I'm typically not big on canned food, but green beans? Yes. My grandma used to serve them and I just really like the flavor. So, naturally I like canned green beans in this recipe. So easy too, to just pop open that can, drain them and add them to the soup. They're already soft and good to go.

Now, if you just can't do it, I understand. You can use fresh or frozen green beans. Depending on how soft you want them to end up, you may want to cook them before adding them to the soup. Up to you. You could microwave them in water to par-boil them before adding them in. Or just used canned and safe yourself the trouble. Just sayin. 🙂

Any kind of potatoes work.

You can use any type of potato for this recipe. I typically buy and use large russet potatoes so if you are using a smaller potato like a red potato, you'll need to use probably twice and many potatoes since they're about half the size. The amount of potatoes doesn't have to be exact so just your best guess will be totally fine.

If you're really short on time, you can use canned potatoes. They are already cooked and soft so you don't need to pre-cook or drain them. You can skip that step, just bring everything to a boil and cook for just 5 minutes. SO EASY! And I've found that canned potatoes actually taste pretty decent. You don't notice a "canned" flavor as much as you do with some other canned foods.