Hawaii's Share Your Table

I have strong opinions on the subject of Portuguese Bean Soup: No macaroni. No Portuguese sausage. No canned beans. No shortcuts. The soup starts with dried beans, soup bones and ham hocks and simmers long and slow.

Using Portuguese sausage is a common shortcut, but if you’re cooking the soup as you should — loooooow and sloooooow, the sausage will quickly become dry and stringy. Besides, Grandma would say that sausages are too expensive to be used in soup! The authentic message is to begin with ham hocks and soup bones, then flavor the soup with the the same ingredients used in linguica (Portuguese sausage), including garlic, pepper and Portuguese five-spice.

Lately, soup bones, like other bone-in meats, are becoming difficult to find. However, supermarkets in Hawaii routinely stock oxtails. One day, when there wasn’t a soup bone to be had in my local Safeway, I bought oxtails instead and made Portuguese Bean soup with them. Wow! Rich and exceptionally meaty. If you make the soup with oxtails, it’s important to make the broth the night before and refrigerate it so that you can readily skim away the fat. Oxtails are very rich!

Portuguese spice is the not-so-secret ingredient in many Portuguese meat dishes, including sausages, soups and roasted meats. It’s a spice mixture that varies from family to family but always includes “warm” spices, such as cinnamon, cloves or allspice, and often bay leaves or rosemary, which are frequently used in Portuguese cooking. In the old days, the spices were purchased whole, roasted and then ground, with groups of people sharing the expense and the work. You can save expense and time by placing whole spices in a muslin bag (available in kitchen supply stores) or tied into a square of cheesecloth.