Sausage, Chorizo and Bean Casserole

I’ve eaten this meal more times than I can count.  It’s utterly delicious, and easy to cook.  It makes great lunches that you can batch cook on a Sunday and then throw in the freezer.

Ingredients

• olive oil
• 1 onion
• 2 medium finely chopped sticks celery
• 1 yellow pepper, chopped
• 1 red pepper, chopped
• 3 fat garlic clove, chopped
• 3 chopped cooking chorizo sausages ~200g
• 6 chopped pork sausage ~400g
• 1½ tsp sweet smoked paprika
• ½ tsp ground cumin
• 1 tbsp dried thyme
• 125ml white wine
• 2 tins cooked tomatoes
• 2 sprigs fresh thyme
• 1 chicken stock cube
• 2 tins butter beans

Notes

Use whatever oil you prefer, Olive Oil is just my preference.  Butter beans can be swapped out for any beans you like, and I suspect lentils would make a great alternative (very spanish).

Sausages should be slow carb compliant, so check for added cereals.  Basically any >95% pork sausage should do the job.

Method

I use a Tefal cast iron casserole dish, which I can fry everything off in and stick in the oven for the final 40 minutes, rather than having to worry about bits sticking to the bottom on the hob.

Add a little oil to the pan and batch fry the sausages and chorizo.  You won’t need much oil because the chorizo will secrete a lot of it’s fat.  Don’t try to fry them in one go they’ll steam and you won’t get nice browning.  Set to one side with the oil from the pan.

Tip: If you have bits stuck to the bottom of the pan, you can deglaze using the wine at this point, just add the resulting wine/bits to the sausages you set aside.

Add oil back to the pan and sauté the onion for a few minutes before adding the garlic, peppers and celery.  Cook for a further 5 minutes until the veg are soft.  Add the spices and mix well.

Add the sausages/chorizo, tomatoes, wine, fresh thyme and wine to the pan and bring back to a simmer.  Simmer for a further 40 minutes (or longer).  If you’re using a suitable dish, chuck it in the oven for less effort/monitoring.

Tip: Tie the fresh thyme together so that the stalks are easy to remove later.

Finally, 10 minutes before serving, remove the fresh thyme stalks, and drain and add the butter beans.

This is my lunch of choice, and I cook a large batch weekly on Sunday for the freezer.  Combined with my Crockpot Food Warmer, it makes my work lunches a breeze (a tasty breeze at that!).

If you cook this, please let me know, seriously it’ll make my day.  You can find me on Twitter, in the Slow Carb Club, or just reply in the comments.

Update!

An extra step that I like to follow, is to turn the sausages into pork meatballs.  They already have all the seasoning, they just need pulling out of their cases.

You must ensure that the sausages are very high meat content (98%+), and are COLD, otherwise when you try to fry off the balls, they’ll fall apart and you’ll end up with pork mince, not pork meatballs, and even though it’s the same ingredients, that ends up tasting fuckin’ nasty!

Hold each sausage, and with the tips of your fingers, pinch out about 1/4 of the sausage.  The meat should hold it’s shape pretty well, no need to roll it into a ball.  Fry them off as before, but try not to move them around to much.

You get a much nicer caramelisation of the meat, and the lack of sausage casings is a more pleasant texture imo.  Unfortunately this doesn’t seem practical with the chorizo, i think the liquid/fat content is too high, but if you fancy giving it a go let us know how it pans out in the comments.

Also, I find it actually easier to do this, than to chop them.  No matter how sharp the knife, chopping always results in loads of sausage meat stuck all over the knife that needs wiping off every couple of slices.