Sausage and butter-bean stew

Submitted by Sackville

"A hearty stew that's perfect for when the days start turning colder and you need something warming in your belly."

 

• Ready In: 1hr
• Ingredients: 11

ingredients

• 1 (400 g) can butter beans
• 4 slices of rindless streaky bacon
• 2 tablespoons vegetable oil
• 1 red onion, chopped
• 2 cloves garlic, minced
• 6 sage leaves, shredded
• 1 bay leaf
• 2 carrots
• 8 hearty pork sausage links
• 300 ml beer
• salt and pepper

directions

1. Slice the bacon rashers into chunky pieces.
2. Heat the oil in a heavy-bottomed, medium-sized pan and add the bacon, stirring with a wooden spoon to break up the pieces.
3. Gradually increase the heat, cooking until crisp and all the fat has melted.
4. Stir onion, garlic, sage and bay leaf into the bacon.
5. Season lightly with salt and generously with pepper and cook, stirring often, for 5 minutes.
6. Peel the carrots and slice them into chunks, then stir into the onions and cook, stirring often, for a further 5 minutes until the onion is slippery and wilted.
7. Cut the sausages into 4 or 5 pieces.
8. Increase the heat and stir the sausages into the pan.
9. Brown them thoroughly all over, then add the beer.
10. Increase the heat, stir well and bring the liquid to the boil.
11. Tip the beans into a sieve or colander, rinse under running water, shake dry and add to the pan.
12. Return to the boil, then reduce the heat, partially cover the pan and cook gently for 30 minutes until the sausages are cooked through and the carrots are tender.
13. Check the seasoning.
14. Serve immediately or leave overnight and reheat the next day.

Reviews

[Mysterygirl]

This had a really good flavor to it. However, because I live in the US, I made some modifications to it. First, I don't know what streaky bacon is, so I used the kind that we get here and omitted the vegetable oil as it wasn't needed. Second, I used a pound of homemade breakfast sausage and cut it up in chunks. Because these have a lot of fat content, before I added the beans and the beer, I drained most of the fat off of the dish. I enjoyed the flavor and the ease of making this dish.