Stretch-It Kitchen

Soup Beans and Cornbread: The Appalachian Dinner and What It Costs Tonight

A pot of pinto soup beans with a ham hock and a skillet of buttermilk cornbread feeds eight for $10.67 at a Greer, SC Harris Teeter. Here is the sourced recipe, how to cook it, and the dried versus canned math.

In a lot of Upstate and mountain kitchens, “soup beans” does not mean bean soup. It means a pot of pinto beans cooked low with a piece of smoked pork until the broth turns thick and brown, ladled into a bowl, with a wedge of cornbread on the side or crumbled right into it. Chopped raw onion on top if you want it. That is the whole supper. It has lasted because a bag of dried beans goes further than almost anything else in the store.

So what does that supper cost tonight? We priced it at the Harris Teeter on Old Spartanburg Road in Greer, using a published, well-rated recipe instead of one we made up.

What the pot costs at the Greer Harris Teeter

The beans are Allrecipes’ Southern Ham and Brown Beans, which is soup beans by another name: one pound of dry pintos, one meaty ham hock, an onion, garlic, water and a little chili powder. It carries a 4.6-star average from 268 ratings. Here is that pot at regular shelf price on October 21, 2026, counting only what goes in it.

A bigger hock costs more at $3.99 a pound, so weigh yours. That works out to about $1.00 a bowl for the beans and about $1.33 a plate with a wedge of cornbread. If you are starting from a bare pantry and have to buy the whole jar of chili powder and the whole bag of salt, the register total for the bean pot is $11.53, and you keep the leftovers of everything.

How to make it

1. Put the beans, ham hock, onion, garlic and water in a big stockpot, then stir in the chili powder, salt and pepper.
2. Bring it to a boil and let it boil for 2 minutes. Take the pot off the heat, put the lid on, and let it sit for 1 hour. This is the quick soak, and it happens right in the cooking pot.
3. Put the pot back on the burner and bring it back to a boil. Turn the heat down to medium-low and let it simmer until the broth thickens and the beans are soft, at least 3 hours and up to 6.
4. About 15 minutes before you plan to eat, lift the ham hock out onto a cutting board. Let it cool for 5 to 10 minutes, then pull the meat off the bone.
5. Stir the meat back into the pot, throw the bone away, and taste. Add salt and pepper until it tastes right to you.

Pick through the dry beans before they go in the pot. Bagged beans can still carry a small stone or a shriveled bean now and then, and a quick look on a plate catches them.

What we checked before we trusted it

A good rating is a start, not proof, so we checked the numbers in the recipe against an extension guide.

• The water. Eight cups for a pound of beans is about three cups of water for every cup of dry beans, the same ratio Mississippi State University Extension gives for soaking. The beans drink a lot of it over three hours, which is why the broth ends up thick instead of watery.
• The soak. Boil 2 minutes, then off the heat for 1 hour, is the standard quick-soak method in that same extension guide. One difference: the extension guide drains the soaking water and starts over with fresh water. This recipe keeps the soaking water in the pot. Both are common. If beans bother your stomach, drain after the hour and add 8 cups of fresh water back.
• The time. The recipe’s 3 to 6 hours is longer than the 2-hour simmer in that extension guide. The long, slow simmer is what thickens the broth, and older beans take longer to soften, so taste a few at the three-hour mark before you call it.
• The yield. Allrecipes says 8 servings. One pound of dry pintos plus the broth fills eight generous bowls, which matches.

We changed nothing in the recipe. The only thing we added is the reminder to sort the beans.

Ham hock, smoked sausage, or no meat at all

The hock is there for smoke and salt, and the bit of meat you pull off it at the end. It is also the most expensive thing in the pot. Here is what the same pot costs with a different piece of meat, same store, same day.

The meatless pot needs more salt than you would guess, because the hock was doing that job. A spoon of bacon grease helps if you keep a jar by the stove. The sausage version is the easiest to sell to kids. Slice it into coins and add it for the last hour so it does not cook to mush.

Dried beans or canned?

The bigger savings is the beans themselves. The pound bag of dry pintos was $2.29. To end up with about the same amount of cooked beans from cans, you need four 15.5-ounce cans, and at $1.29 each that is $5.16. Same pot, same hock, same onion, and the canned version comes to $10.85 instead of $7.99.

Canned beans are already cooked, so they would not want three hours in the pot. If you go that way you are making a different, faster dish, and this recipe does not cover it. We priced it so you can see the gap, not because we cooked it. Mississippi State’s extension guide puts it plainly: dried beans are usually cheaper than canned. On this shelf, the bag costs less than half as much.

Skillet cornbread to go with it

Sweet cornbread has its fans, but soup beans usually get the plain, crusty kind from a hot skillet. We used Allrecipes’ Cast Iron Skillet Buttermilk Cornbread, rated 4.4 stars from 22 ratings, with three changes to keep the cart small. The original calls for both white and yellow cornmeal, lard, and a pinch of paprika and kosher salt on top. We used one bag of plain cornmeal for all of it, swapped the lard for vegetable oil, and skipped the paprika and kosher salt sprinkled on top.

1. Put a cast iron skillet in the oven and heat the oven to 450 degrees F with the skillet inside.
2. In a big bowl, mix the cornmeal, flour, baking powder and salt. Stir in the buttermilk and oil, then the egg, until the batter is smooth.
3. Pull the hot skillet out, melt the butter in it, and pour in the batter. It should sizzle when it hits.
4. Put it back in the oven, turn the heat down to 425 degrees F, and bake until the top is browned and the edges pull away from the pan, about 15 minutes. Let it cool for 5 minutes and cut it into wedges.

The recipe does not name a skillet size. With about two cups of dry mix, a 10-inch skillet gives wedges a little under an inch thick. A smaller skillet works and just needs a few more minutes.

That pan cost $2.68 for eight wedges at regular prices. For comparison, two 8.5-ounce boxes of Jiffy corn muffin mix plus the two eggs and milk they call for came to $2.46. The box is a little cheaper and a lot sweeter. The scratch pan uses things you probably already have, and the cornmeal bag makes it several more times.

What goes on the side

• Chopped raw onion. Already in your cart for the pot. A spoonful on top of each bowl is the classic way.
• Chow-chow. The sweet pickled cabbage relish. A 16-ounce jar of Mrs. Campbell’s was $4.29 at the same store, and one jar covers a lot of bowls.
• Fried potatoes. If you want the full plate, a pan of sliced potatoes fried in a little oil or bacon grease is the usual partner. Russets were $1.29 a pound.

Leftovers

Soup beans are better the second day, once the broth sets up overnight. Let the pot cool and get it into the refrigerator within two hours. The USDA’s leftovers guidance gives cooked leftovers 3 to 4 days in the fridge or 3 to 4 months in the freezer, and says to reheat them to 165 degrees F. Beans freeze well in pint containers. Add a splash of water when you reheat, because they thicken as they sit.

Leftover cornbread goes stale fast. Wrap it and use it within a couple of days, or crumble it into the beans, which is how plenty of people eat it on purpose.

Keep going

If you like cooking this way, what a bowl of beans and rice really costs runs the same kind of math on another pantry supper. Big-batch chili that stretches a pound of beef is the pot to make when you want a week of lunches. For the whole cheap-dinner shelf in one place, the cheap foods worth buying list is the one to print. And if you are feeding four tonight on a short budget, here are seven dinners for four under $10, priced at the shelf.

Do you eat your soup beans with the cornbread on the side, or crumbled right into the bowl?

Recipes: Southern Ham and Brown Beans and Cast Iron Skillet Buttermilk Cornbread, both from Allrecipes, followed as written except the changes we name. Prices: regular shelf prices at Harris Teeter Hudson Corners, 2145 Old Spartanburg Rd, Greer, SC 29650, pulled October 21, 2026 through the Kroger Products API. Sale prices left out. Your store and week will vary.

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