Sausage casserole with butter beans
Ingredients
Serves 4-6
- 1 tbsp rapeseed oil
- 8-12 pork sausages chopped into 3, depending on how many you are making it for
- 1 onion, peeled and diced
- 2 carrots, peeled and sliced
- 1 clove garlic, peeled and crushed
- 1 stick celery, diced small
- 2 Portobello (flat) mushrooms, peeled, cut into 3 vertically and then sliced thinly horizontally
- 1/2 teaspoon bouillon powder
- 1 tablespoon tomato paste
- 400g butter beans, drained and rinsed
- 600ml cold water
- 1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce
- 1 tablespoon dark soy sauce
- Moldon sea salt
- Black pepper
- 1 large bunch base herbs (rosemary, oregano, thyme), chopped
Timings
Prep time: 20 minutes
Cooking time: 1 hour 30 minutes
Total time: 1 hour 50 minutes
Sausage casserole with butter beans
When I made this for kids tea one day, it was meant to be sausage rolls. However, the pastry broke as soon as I rolled it out and I wanted to get their dinner finished before I headed out on the school run. So I had to think on my feet… I had onions, celery, carrots, garlic, mushrooms, lots of herbs in the garden, leftover red wine under the sink and I always make sure there are staples such as tomato puree, bouillon, tins of beans, soy and Worcestershire sauce in the cupboards for moments like this. It took 20 minutes to put together and was in the oven for one and a half hours while I got the kids. They loved it so much I thought I had better write it down.
Method
Preheat the oven to 160/315/gas 2-3.
Heat the rapeseed oil over a high heat in a heavy based saucepan or casserole dish. Add the sausages and brown. Add the onion, carrots and mushrooms, and cook for 5 minutes, stirring occasionally. Turn the heat to medium and add the garlic. Cook for 2 minutes before adding the wine. Turn to a high heat and reduce the wine until it is sticky (this burns off the alcohol and gives a sweet caramel taste to the vegetables).
Then add the tomato paste, herbs, Worcestershire sauce and soy sauce and cook for 30 seconds, and give it all a good stir. Finally add the tinned butter beans, water and bouillon.
Turn up to full heat to make sure it has reached temperature. Once simmering, turn off the hob, give it a good stir to stop it from catching, pop the lid on and cook for 1 hour and 30 minutes in the oven.
Serve with greens.
DOWNLOAD OR PRINT RECIPE HERE.
Flex and adapt – nothing is particularly right or wrong in the kitchen. If things don’t go according to plan, look at what you’ve got and see if you can make anything else from your ingredients. Go back to a method you know works well and substitute the ingredients you would usually use for it with whatever you’ve got. Slow cooking particularly is one that gets better with time so as long as you caramalise the ingredients and add flavour at the beginning, you can be confident it will be delicious.”
No Comments