Easy Sausage Cassoulet
Cassoulet is a classic comfort food from the south of France. I never had it or even heard about it until just a few years ago. I guess having a french husband helped a little. If you’ve never heard about it, I could describe it as slow cooked beans and meat. In fact, the recipe and origin of cassoulet is very disputed. The recipe changes from cities to cities, the biggest difference being the type of meat used.
Having cassoulet when you don’t live in France is not easy, let alone good one. We tried to come up with a recipe that would be simple to make at home with easy to find ingredients. The result is close enough to the real cassoulet and most importantly it is tasty!
I use pork sausage but any kind would do. You could use meat like duck confit but I would rather use it in other ways. Really, the star of the dish are the beans. A nice thing to do is to drizzle a little balsamic vinegar on the side of the plate to eat with the cassoulet. If you’re looking for a great fall or winter comfort food recipe, then give this a try, I promise it’s super easy!
Nico’s wine pairing: A red wine with enough tannic structure to cut through the richness of cassoulet. A wine from the Languedoc region would be perfect. Think Minervois, Saint-Chinian, Côtes du Roussillon.
Easy Sausage Cassoulet
Serves 4
Ingredients
- 4 pork sausages
- 1 cup cherry tomatoes
- 1 onion
- 5 cloves garlic
- few sprigs of thyme
- 5 tbsp balsamic vinegar
- 2 tbsp worcestershire sauce
- 3 tbsp olive oil
- 2 cans of white beans
- 2 cups chicken broth
- big pinch of salt (less if sausages are salty)
- black pepper
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 400F.
- Halve the cherry tomatoes. Cut the onion in wedges.
- Lay tomatoes and onions in a large baking dish or cast iron pan with sausages, garlic and thyme. Add a pinch of salt and black pepper. Splash with balsamic vinegar, worcestershire sauce and olive oil. Gently shake to coat all the ingredients. Bake for 45 minutes, turning the sausages half way.
- Remove the dish from the oven. Deglaze the bottom of the dish with a few table spoons of chicken broth. Add beans with the juice from the can and cover with chicken broth. Return to the oven for 30 to 45 minutes. The sauce should have a nice thick consistency.
- Serve hot.