Easy Ham and Cabbage Soup

This ham and cabbage soup recipe is a family favorite. It’s the perfect dish to make after a big ham dinner. Use the ham bone to make a flavorful ham stock and lots of healthy vegetables to make this warming soup. There is also a low calorie and low carb version.

You might also love this creamy vegetable and ham casserole recipe.

I had never heard of this dish until I met my husband. I think it’s because my mom never really made ham, and this is a dish that you make with the leftover ham bone and scraps.

This tasty soup happens to be one of my husband’s favorite comfort foods and it’s become one of mine too. The best thing about this ham and cabbage soup recipe is that it’s simple and very tasty. And because ham is a lean protein it adds lots of flavor without too many calories.

Recipe ingredients I used.

Every time we have a ham, we use the bone to make ham stock and I’ll show you how simple it is to do below. The ingredients I use for this recipe is ham stock, chopped ham, carrots, cabbage, onion, celery and white potatoes.

The only seasoning I use is salt and black pepper. The salt can be tricky as ham tends to be salty so I wait til the end to add it after I’ve tasted the soup.

Note if you are not making your own ham stock you can substitute with chicken broth, beef broth, vegetable broth or even just water. You will have to adjust seasonings accordingly though.

How to make ham stock with a ham bone.

Step 1: The first thing you want to do to is to make your ham stock. I find the easiest way is in a slow cooker.

Step 2: Add your large hambone (after you’ve cleaned as much meat as you want off of it) and pour water to cover almost to the top of the slow cooker. Add a  bay leaf or two, some pepper and I omit the salt because you never know how much is in a ham.

You can even just add water and you will get a flavorful broth from the ham. Let that cook over night and you should get a nice rich broth.

Step 3: Strain the broth from the crockpot into your big soup pot and put in the refrigerator for a few hours. When you do this, the fat will rise to the top and harden, making it easy to take off. See how it hardens (pic below).

Step 4: Use the stock to make soup right away or pour into freezer containers and use at another time.

How to make this easy ham and cabbage soup.

1. Get out a large stock pot or dutch oven to medium high heat. Add the stock and let it heat up.
2. In the meantime chop up your veggies and add them to your pot. I like to use onions, carrots, celery, potatoes and of course green cabbage. Some people put green beans too but my hubby doesn’t care for it, so no green beans for us. Turn the heat down to medium heat.
3. Bring to a simmer and then turn down the heat to medium heat. Cook all of the ingredients until the vegetables soften which may be an hour or so. Make sure you have enough stock to cover all the veggies and if not, add water.
4. Once the veggies have softened, add the bite size pieces of ham and cook for about 5 minutes more.
5. At that point you can season with salt and black pepper to taste. Because ham can be salty I suggest you taste the broth before adding and salt. The black pepper is always good to add in my opinion. 

Store leftover soup in an airtight container or freeze for another time. (Please scroll down for the printable recipe card.)

If you want to make this a low carb ham soup.

While this recipe uses potatoes, you can just eliminated them to make this recipe low carb.

Without the potatoes each serving has roughly 123 calories and 6.1g net carbs. So it can be a low carb and low calorie soup!

If you really miss potatoes, try using turnips, radishes, celery root or rutabagas as a potato substitute.

Recipe notes and tips.

• I make our ham and cabbage soup this way because it’s how my husband grow up with it and how he likes it. But sometimes we add green beans too.
• If you don’t have a ham bone to make stock, you can try vegetable broth or vegetable stock instead. You will definitely want to add more salt and black pepper though.
• You might like this low calorie cabbage soup that is really flavorful or these other cabbage recipes. I love to make cabbage noodles for a low carb pasta substitute.
• Or try these leftover ham recipes if you have a lot of leftover meat.

And that is all there is to it for this easy ham and cabbage soup. Even though it’s a simple soup, it’s a hearty meal in of itself. We just eat it with French or Italian bread and that’s our whole meal. If you are a soup lover, I have over 45 soup recipes to try.

I hope you like this dish and if you’ve ever heard of it before, drop me a line in the comments and tell me how you make yours. Do you add green beans?

You might also like this Hungarian ham casserole if you have leftover ham.