Source:

Karen "Sissy" Wommack

Serves/Makes:2 quarts

Ingredients

• 3 quarts (2850 ml) cut green beans
• 1 small sugar cured precooked ham, 2 lbs (.9 kg). or 3 lbs (1.4 kg).(make sure it is sugar cured)
• water
• salt, to taste

Preparation

• Take the green beans, I prefer the green beans with shelly beans, but they are not available everywhere, so any grean bean with do, except the French Style, do not use them. They can be fresh green beans or canned.
• Take the beans and put into a large crock pot, if fresh beans make sure they are cleaned, broke and ready, cover them with water. If canned green beans, there should be enough liquid in them, but if not, then add water to cover them.
• Put the lid on the crock pot and cook on low all night or all day.
• In the mean time, take the ham and wrap it good with Aluminum foil, making sure you have wrapped and sealed it good enough that the juice cannot run out.
• Put the wrapped ham in a open roasting pan, I prefer an iron skillet, no lid, and bake in the oven on about 200 degrees (90 C.), making sure that you preserve all the liquid from the ham, you do not want it to dry up, because you need the juice for the seasoning of the beans.
• Cook it overnight or all day.
• Then the next morning, or that night, if you cooked it all day, turn the oven up to 350 degrees (175 C.) and cook for about 1 hour. You want the sugar in the ham to become almost like syrup, if you can.
• The next morning or night, pour the green beans out of the crock pot into at least a 6 quarts (5675 ml) pan or dutch oven, add the ham with all it juice and drippings, getting all you can of the drippings and juice, if the juice has ran out in the pan during baking, just add some hot water to this and scrap it up and pour that in the beans also.
• Break up the ham if necessary.
• DO NOT put the lid on the pot.
• Put the beans on the stove top and boil them hard, adding water as needed, we call this boiling them down, to almost dry before adding more water.
• Taste them after about the second boil down and see if they need salt. Sometime they will not, because the ham will have enough salt in it, so be careful.
• After the beans have cooked down until they are almost out of water 4 or 5 times--or more, up to you and you have added water when they did, then cook them down one final time until they are just about without any liquid, being careful not to burn them.
• This whole boil down process could take 2 or 3 hours. How many times you cook them down is up to you, but they do need to cook down at least 4 times before you do the last, and final dry cook down.
• The beans will be very dark in color. This is how you want them to look. The sugar from the ham is what makes them dark.

Comments

My Sister, Gail Lewis, got married when she was 15, had 3 little girls by the time she was 18, so she grew up with her girls. If her husband, Don, had lived to this December 17, 2008, they would have been married for 50 years. Don was older than Gail, and he had been out on his own some before they married, so he knew how to cook some, so he taught her how to cook a lot of things. She learned as she cooked. All three of her girls have done well. Her oldest just retired from being a principal of a school in Lexington, Ky. Her middle one, has 2 grown boys that play golf on scholarships at the University of Kentucky she follows them around and works in the school system, in Bowling Green, Ky. The youngest daughter does very well selling furniture and doing interior decorating, in Bowling Green, Ky.

I met my sister Gail, at our Daddy's funeral, in 1964. She is my half sister. We have the same dad, and we both had great moms. We are very close, and see each other as often as we can.

Enjoy!! Sissy