Irish Parliament Bean Soup ~ Vintage Recipe
Traditional Irish Parliament Bean Soup has been served for hundreds of years, if you believe folklore. A hearty and warm soup, there’s no reason you can’t make this at home for your family.
A popular soup in a local Florida pub, I was intrigued to track down a recipe for the soup and modify it for home use. But not after some humorous trial and error.
Some recipes just touch your heart and soul and beg for you to reinvent a moment in time. This is one of those recipes. I first tasted it on vacation and longed to be able to capture that easy, relaxed feeling that accompanied the bowl of soup.
The Vacation Story
Irish Parliament Bean Soup from Meg O’Malley’s Irish Pub in Melbourne, Florida. They offer this delicious soup on their menu for the traditional price of 18 cents. If you are in Melbourne, I’d suggest you stop by Meg’s for lunch, dinner, drinks, or whatever. You can’t miss!
The recipe for this soup was something I’ve been watching for ever since our visit about five years ago. Recently, I did a search for it and found what one person claims is the original recipe. Now, since I know that not everything you read on the Internet isn’t necessarily true, I took that claim with the proverbial pinch of salt. However, the recipe appeared to have all the ingredients I remembered, so I tried it.
The Adventure
I gathered the ingredients and this last weekend decided to test the recipe. It was pretty easy finding most of the ingredients required. Nearly every grocery store I know carries dried beans, carrots, celery and onions. Finding a ham bone was a little bit of a challenge. The first shopping trip resulted in no ham bone. Why? Because I forgot to write it on my list!
On my next trip, I remembered to write down “ham bone”, but the store where I usually shop didn’t have any in the meat case. Since it was late, I didn’t ask the butcher if there was a ham bone hiding in the back cooler.
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During the third trip out, I was able to locate a package of ham hocks. Now, although ham hocks are similar, they are not exactly: ham bone. By this time, I’d decided that a substitution would work just fine. In fact, I decided the ham hocks looked like they would work very nicely! And honestly, they did. Ideally, you would use a leftover ham bone from your holiday dinner.
I was also surprised at the difficulty I had locating bay leaves in my local stores. I checked several of the grocery stores for bay leaves on those many trips. If they had bay leaves in stock, I wasn’t able to read the label to find them. Which is possible, considering my eyesight. I did finally find some bay leaves and was ready to start cooking.
Make It a Meal:
While you certainly can make a meal of this Irish Parliament Bean Soup, it works well as a side dish also. For a light meal, add some of your favorite bread to the bowl of soup. Try Lunch Lady Corn Bread, Traditional Greek Cornbread or Classic Cornbread in Cast Iron. For something a little different, serve Sweet Potato or Savory Olive & Onion bread.
Making the Recipe
I followed the recipe to the letter and started on Saturday morning chopping up the carrots, celery and onions. Since I was working on the other weekend recipe for roast beef and it’s a time save to chop all the veggies at the same time. I figure that while I’m in the chopping mood, get all the dicing out of the way! That way I only have to clean up once.
Dried beans are quite nutritious and economical, but they take a little planning for preparation. Most recipes I’ve found that call for dried beans require that the beans are soaked overnight. Saturday I placed the two pounds of beans in my pan and added the water for soaking. When I saw the beans in my pan, I thought: That’s a lot of beans.
Sunday I pulled out my crock pot and began the steps to complete the recipe. One gallon of water was called for. I did a little cooking math and translated 1 gallon to 4 quarts, which at 4 cups to a quart is 16 cups. WHAT! 16 cups of water! I started counting.
I filled my crock pot. Literally, the crock pot was full and I hadn’t added *any* additional ingredients. I decided it would be wise to use the second crock pot also. Count out 8 cups of water into the second crock pot. Then I divided the remaining ingredients in half, placing some in each crock pot and set the temperature to low.
Pin It:
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The Lesson Learned
When you obtain a recipe from a restaurant, consider the portions they are working with. Most chefs have to feed a crowd each night and therefore the recipes they use tend to make large quantities.
This is in our favor when as customers, we don’t have to wait for the soup to cook (90 minutes) or hear the waiter say “sorry, we’re out”.  However, at home, we generally are cooking for four or six people. The next time I make this recipe, I’ll be dividing the ingredient quantities in half or in quarters.
Since my family wasn’t going to eat two full crock pots of soup and freezing that much would definitely keep me set for soup lunches forever, I needed to find a way to share the soup.
I took one crock pot full of bean soup into the office and asked my coworkers to sample it. The consensus from my taste testers: Very Yummy Indeed.
I did end up freezing a good sized portion of soup. And I’m eating bean soup for lunch every day this week.
Irish Parliament Bean Soup Recipe
Ingredients:
Navy Beans, Ham Bone, Water, Onion, Celery, Carrots, Salt & Pepper, Thyme, Bay Leaves
Recipe Directions:
Chop, soak, simmer, enjoy!
Recipe attributed to Meg O’Malley’s Irish Pub in Melbourne, Florida
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Irish Parliament Bean Soup for a Crowd
Recipe attributed to Meg O'Malley's Irish Pub in Melbourne, Florida
Ingredients
- 2 pounds Navy Beans dried
- 1 Ham Bone
- 1 gallon Water
- 1 medium Onion
- 4 stalks Celery
- 2 large Carrots
- pinch Salt & Pepper
- 1 teaspoon Thyme
- 2 Bay Leaves
Instructions
-
Rinse beans in cold water and soak overnight.
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In 6 quart stock pan, add drained beans, ham bone, water and seasonings: bring to simmer.
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Continue to simmer over a medium-low heat, stirring occasionally, until beans are soft (about 1 1/2 hours).
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Dice the onion, celery and carrots.
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Add vegetables and cook until tender and soup has thickened.
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Remove ham bone, adjust seasonings and enjoy with Irish Brown Bread or your favorite crackers.
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Irish Parliament Bean Soup for the Family
Ingredients
- 1/2 pound Navy Beans dried
- 1 quart Water
- 1/2 small Onion
- 1 stalk Celery
- 1 small Carrot
- Salt & Pepper
- 1/4 teaspoon Thyme
- 1/2 Bay Leaf
- 1 Ham Bone
Instructions
-
Rinse beans in cold water and soak overnight.
-
In large pan or stock pot, add drained beans, ham bone, water and seasonings: bring to simmer.
-
Continue to simmer over a medium-low heat, stirring occasionally, until beans are soft (about 1 1/2 hours).
-
Dice onion, celery, carrots. Add vegetables and cook until tender and soup has thickened.
-
Remove ham bone, adjust seasonings and enjoy with Irish Brown Bread or your favorite crackers.
Note:
Since I didn’t have a stock pot (it’s on my wish list!) I used my crock pot. I cooked this soup on low for 4 hours. As I was assembling the ingredients, I didn’t pay attention to the amounts in the recipe. It should have been a warning when the first item is 2 pounds of dried beans. Two Pounds!
Meg O Malley’s is an Irish pub in Melbourne, Florida. It’s a wonderful place to visit, but they must serve more people in a single day than I do in a couple of weeks at home. Duh.
I ended up using both of my 4 quart crock pots to cook this soup! You may want to halve the recipe if you are cooking for your family.
Approximate Nutritional Information:
Servings Per Recipe: 12, Amount Per Serving: Calories: 86, Fat: 1.3g, Cholesterol: 6g, Sodium: 152mg, Carbs: 13g, Protein: 6g
(please remember these are approximate and will vary slightly based on your ingredient selections.)
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