A woman's flannel-sleeved arm stirring a cream enamel pot of soup beans with a wooden spoon on a white electric stove, her face out of frame, a colander of soaked pintos, a dish towel with a few picked-out stones, and a cast-iron skillet of cornbread on the counter, an old yellow lab asleep by the floor register, a green ridge through the kitchen window at early evening — Happy Valley, NC
Sarah Happy Valley, NC

Sarah's Soup Beans and Cornbread

First night the heat comes on, the house smells like a summer of dust burning off the vents, and that is when the beans go on. Nobody decided that. It is just what happens in this kitchen, the way the porch chairs come in after the first frost.

Soup beans are not much of a recipe. Pintos, a ham hock, water, salt, and the afternoon. The only real work is sorting the beans before they soak, because a bag of dried beans from anywhere still has a few small stones in it, and you find out the hard way only once. The cornbread is the part people argue about. Ours has no sugar in it. If you want cake, make cake.

From the kitchen
Serves 6 · Soak overnight, then most of an afternoon

For the beans

For the cornbread

How it goes

  1. The night before, pour the beans out on a dish towel a handful at a time and pick out the stones, the shriveled ones, and anything that is not a bean. Rinse them, cover with cold water by a few inches, and leave them overnight.
  2. Drain the beans and put them in a heavy pot with the ham hock and the halved onion. Cover with fresh water by about two inches and bring it up to a boil.
  3. Turn it down to the lowest simmer the stove will hold and leave the lid cracked. Three hours, give or take. Stir when you walk past and add hot water if they start to show above the liquid.
  4. Once the beans are soft all the way through, pull the hock, take the meat off the bone, and put it back in the pot. Fish out what is left of the onion. Now the salt goes in, and pepper. Salt any earlier and the skins stay tough.
  5. Mash a ladle of beans against the side of the pot and stir them back in. That is what makes the broth. Let it go another half hour.
  6. For the cornbread, put the grease in a 10-inch cast-iron skillet and set the skillet in the oven while it heats to 450°F. The skillet has to be hot. That is the crust.
  7. Whisk the cornmeal, salt, baking powder, and soda together. Beat the egg into the buttermilk and stir it into the dry just until it comes together.
  8. Pull the skillet out, swirl the grease around, and pour most of it into the batter. Stir once and pour the batter into the skillet. It should sizzle.
  9. Bake 20 to 25 minutes, until the top is golden and the edges pull away. Turn it out onto a board.
  10. Beans in a bowl, cornbread on the side or broken right into them, raw onion over the top. Chowchow if you have it.
Happy Valley, NC  ·  From the Kitchen
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