Bland bean soup

[cjsmith]

Bean soup: onion, celery, a lot of great northern beans, parsley, *some* kind of meat for flavor.

If the meat used is salt pork, the soup turns out to have absolutely no flavor whatsoever. Seriously, this is the blandest thing I've tasted in a long time.

I'm sure some herbs and spices could save this. Beyond the obvious cracked black pepper, what would you add?

Comments

[eichin.livejournal.com]

Did you just dump the salt pork in, or fry it up first? (The one thing I've ever used salt pork for was pierogi - when frying them, a little in with the onions in the pan. Thus I think it's really more "something to have maillard reactions happen to" than a basic flavor :-)