Sausage, Bean, and Pasta Stew
Sausage, Bean, and Pasta Stew
I was looking through recipes yesterday and this dish caught my eye, as it sounds really good. But what through me off was that nearly every ingredient was canned, even the beans! No need to slow cook canned beans, which are already cooked! So this is my version. I made this on 9 July 2016, report in the comments section, and recipe modified just slightly.
Ingredients
- 250 grams Pinto beans, dry, sorted, and rinsed, (1/2 lb)
- 1 onion, diced
- 4 cloves garlic, smashed and chopped
- 3 cups chicken stock, fresh or from a powder
- 1 carrot, diced, OR a diced green bell pepper would work well here
- 500 grams sausage links, spicy or Italian, see note about this
- 1 can tomatoes, with tomatoe juice, diced
- 1 cup ditalini pasta, dry, OR use macaroni, OR spiral pasta
- 2 tablespoons fresh parsley, chopped
- salt and pepper, to taste
- 1-2 cups tomato juice, as needed near the end.
Instructions
- Spread the onions over the bottom of your slow cooker and top the garlic.
- Then with the carrots.
- Then with the beans and sausage. I used Spicy Smoked Pork Sausages from Makro, yes, those 4 sausages are 500 grams.
- Mix the diced tomatoes and juice with the stock and pour over the sausages. (I use a can of Brooks brand whole peeled tomatoes in tomato juice, pour the juice into the stock, roughly chop the tomatoes and add them as well. This is the 565 gram can.)
- Cover and cook on High for 4 to 5 hours or on Low for 7 to 8 hours; the beans will be tender and begin to fall apart.
- Uncover the slow cooker, remove and transfer the sausage links to a cutting board. Stir the pasta into the stew and continue to cook, covered, until the pasta is cooked through, about 20 minutes. Add tomato juice as needed to keep a good stew like consistency.
- Cut the sausage into bite size pieces and return the stew along with the parsley.
- Serve with grated Parmesan cheese on the side to sprinkle on the top if desired.
Notes
Note about the sausage, this can be done several ways. Makro has thick pork sausages (bangers) as well as beef sausages. There is also a thick sausage variety that is very similar to Kielbasa, called Spicy Smoked Sausage and they also have what is called sausage scraps, these are thick sausage pieces that are left over from from cutting up and packaging the long sausages, these are also a variety pack, some is like Kielbasa, some is garlic sausage, some is chili sausage. The sausage scraps would be ideal for this stew.
An alternative to the sausage would be dark chicken meat, cubed, think thighs. Not only would chicken make this a healthier meal, you can make your stock when you boil the chicken. Substitute 500 grams of chicken thighs, skin on and bone in, boil them until done, there is your stock to use, while the stew is cooking, simply remove the skin and bone (save for the pet dog) and roughly cube the meat and refrigerate until the step to cut up the sausage and add back to the slow cooker.
Most expensive ingredient is the sausage, at the most it would cost 250 Baht, for 6 servings this is about $1.25 per meal, for 8 servings this is about 95 cents per meal.
If using chicken, thighs are about 65 Baht/kilo, no need to do the math here, well under $1.00 per serving!
Adapted from an internet recipe.
I made this on 9 July 2016, and it turned out excellent but I did make some adjustments to recipe. I used 4 large Spicy Smoked Sausages, that was 500 grams, excellent flavor. If you cook on high, they will split so watch for that. I had a late state and used low setting, but it was getting late at the 7 hour mark and the beans were not quite done so I turned it up to high, sausages split, chick just affects the visual quality not the taste.
I used 1 cup of spiral pasta instead of the 1/2 cup originally stated, perfect amount with 1 cup. The pasta does soak up some of the liquid so I have added a step to add more tomato juice as need when the pasta is cooking, 1-2 cups should be fine.
Overall, a great meal, and filling! The beans, onion, black pepper, sausage, and tomatoes and juice create a very nice flavor.
While we don’t get sausage scraps here, I would really love to try this with our traditional sausage – boerewors (meaning farmer’s sausage). It has a distinctive coriander flavour. We get these either in a normal sausage thickness, or quite thin. The beauty with these is that it is sold in a long sausage and you can twist and cut it to your desired lengths š
Would love to read the comments after you try that, Denise! I think any sausage will work. The sausage scraps are good value as they are pieces they cannot sell in a nice package, and a great variety of seasonings š