Sigga's Icelandic bean soup recipe

Sigga and CJ would visit the Stuart Houston family at Christmas time and Sigga would make a large pot of bean soup to feed the bird counters when they returned from spending Boxing Day in the countryside to do the annual bird count, a tradition that continues today.

See the Saskatoon Nature Society website.

Margaret got the recipe from her grandmother years ago, and passed it on for us to include here.

Lamb is an integral ingredient in this Icelandic recipe. At present there are about 500,000 sheep in Iceland, down from a high of almost 900,000 in the late 1970s. Back then, sheep outnumbered people about 4 to 1, a ratio that is now closer to 1.5 to 1.

Sigga's Icelandic bean soup

Always made in a huge roaster in the oven and served to the freezing cold Boxing Day bird counters in Saskatoon.

2 cups navy beans (soak overnight and drain)

1 pound beef (a cut with bone provides more flavour)

1 pound lamb (again, with bone in is ideal)

4 cups or more as needed water (could use some beef broth)

2 onions, chopped

Salt and pepper to taste, add after beans are cooked. 

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.

Brown meat, put in large roaster with water to cover and chopped onion.

Leave in oven till beans are cooked and meat is falling off the bone.

Remove bones and break meat into smallish chunks.

Add water or broth as needed to maintain texture of a thick soup.