Tag Archives: kielbasa

Kielbasa & White Bean Cassoulet

BLOG cassoulet

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A cold winter’s day is the perfect time for hauling out your slow cooker and readying ingredients for this thick creamy cassoulet. The recipe, from Simple Living’s January 2016 issue, is one that turned out a total winner last week. If you have a slow cooker, put it to use; set-it-and-forget-It, then thoroughly enjoy!

The prep for this recipe is 20 minutes, tops. Chop the onion and mince the clove garlic, slice the kielbasa and you are ready to go. With a cooking time of 5-7 hours, there is plenty of time for preparing the baguette croutons needed when you are ready to serve. This recipe is so easy that I decided to give it a try one minute and had the cassoulet in the crock pot, heating up, then simmering, 20 minutes later. Nothing could have been easier.  I did use both dried thyme and parsley flakes and not the fresh called for in the recipe and both were perfectly fine substitutions.

The smoky kielbasa is a perfect complement for the creamy white beans and the diced tomatoes add their own tart flavor to the mix. I found the buttered and toasted baguette pieces a worthy, and tasty, contrast to the dish. Whether you want to add another vegetable on the side, or just treat this dish as a complete meal in itself, you will be feeling very accomplished and very satisfied if you give this one a try.

Slow-Cooker Kielbasa & White Bean Cassoulet

Ingredients

1-1/2 cups dried white beans
1 lb. kielbasa, cut into 1” pieces
3 cups chicken broth
1-14.5 oz. can diced tomatoes, undrained
1 medium onion, finely chopped
2 cloves garlic, finely chopped
2 t. fresh thyme leaves, chopped
8-1/2” slices of baguette, buttered & toasted, cubed
¼ cup flat-leaf parsley, chopped
Sea salt and ground black pepper, to taste

Directions Combine beans, kielbasa, broth, tomatoes, onion, garlic, thyme, and ½ t. salt in a 4-to-6 qt. slow cooker. Cover and cook until the beans are creamy, on low for 7-8 hours or on high for 5 hours. Season with salt and pepper. Serve individual bowls of the cassoulet topped with baguette cubes and parsley.

German Sausage Chowder

german sausage chowder and pretzels

This recipe from the Maui News is an oldie-but-goody. I pasted it in my notebook and enjoyed it many times, sending it along to mama for enjoying on winter days in Florida. Here in Missouri today, it is damp AND chilly AND the drizzling rain continues, and so a perfect time for cooking up this chowder. I halved the recipe today because I had already used half of the sausage and the cabbage for another purpose but still ended up with four nice servings.

The chowder is hearty with potatoes, onion, cabbage and smoked sausage, and the broth just as hearty with their flavors. Though the original recipe doesn’t advise sautéing the vegetables and sausage for five minutes with a tablespoon of butter, tonight I did so and it enhanced the overall flavor. You might enjoy this with cornbread muffins because the broth just says, “bread please” but I settled on the Spiced Pretzels also prepared today. The Teacher Gang ate the first batch of pretzels this week down to the crumbly crumbs and today’s batch proved a quirky, but satisfying, accompaniment to chowder tonight. Together, they hit the right note: spicy and creamy. You will love this chowder if you’re expecting cold weather this week too.

German Sausage Chowder

Ingredients:
1 lb. fully cooked bratwurst or kielbasa, cut into 1/2″ pieces
2 russet potatoes, peeled and chopped
1 onion, chopped
1-1/2 tsp. salt
1 tsp. pepper
1 small head cabbage, shredded
3 cups milk
3 T. flour
1 cup Swiss cheese, shredded
Fresh parsley, snipped

Directions In large saucepan or 4-qt. Dutch oven, combine sausage, potatoes, onion, salt and pepper. Saute for 5 minutes in 1 T. of butter. Add 2 cups water and bring to boil; reduce heat. Cover and simmer for 15-20 minutes or until potatoes are nearly tender. Stir in cabbage, cook another 10 minutes or until all vegetables are tender. Stir in 2-1/2 cups of the milk. Blend remaining 1/2 cup milk and the flour and shake well in a jar with a tight-fitting lid to blend; stir into soup. Cook and stir until thickened and bubbly. Stir in the cheese and turn off heat. When cheese has melted, stir to blend well. Garnish with the fresh parsley.