SAUSAGE & BUTTER BEAN SIMMER-AND-SERVE
- 1 tbsp sunflower oil
- 10 chipolatas (I used Heck chicken chipolatas for a more lean meal)
- 1 onion, sliced
- 1 courgette, sliced
- 4 cloves of garlic, sliced
- 1 chicken stock cube
- 1 tin of butter beans, drained and rinced
- zest and juice of 1 lemon
SIDE SALAD
- rocket and herb leaves
- 4 cooked beetroot, chopped
- 8 cherry tomatoes, halved
- handful of mixed seeds
- handful of pomegranate seeds
Heat the oil and gently fry the sausages until they are cooked and browning on the outside. Remove and set aside. Add the onion and cook for 5 minutes, until they are soft. Add the courgette and garlic and fry for another 2 minutes.
Add a cup of water and the stock cube. Stir until the stock cube has evenly distributed in the pan. Bring to the boil and then simmer for 15 minutes. Add a splash of water if it starts to dry out. Chop up the sausages into bite size pieces and add them to the pan, along with the butter beans. Simmer for 8 minutes then stir in the lemon zest and juice. After a minute of enjoying the lovely smells rising up as you stir one last time, serve.
Note: the original recipe said to add chopped parsley and 75g of butter at this point with the lemon zest, but as I am dairy free I skipped the butter and I didn’t have any parsley. I didn’t miss either, but I think they would be lovely flavours to add.
We ate this with the side salad above, no dressing (the pomegranate, beetroot and tomatoes all insure it’s not dry).
You could totally eat this with pasta, crusty bread or even something like bulgar wheat or cous cous, but we are trying to reduce our carbohydrate intake so just had really healthy portions of stew and salad.
This is such a lovely, light stew to eat on a mid-week winter night. The whole meal took about 40 minutes to prepare and cook, so it’s easy to get on the table. The children had friends over last night so they had a different sausage pasta bake as I was playing it safe with other people’s children. My son actually came in later and pinched a few mouthfuls of our stew, so I will do this another time for just us four.
the things on my plate 