Hairy Bikers Pork and Bean Casserole Recipe

Three kinds of pork go into Hairy Bikers pork and bean casserole: 500g of pork belly, eight sausages and 150g of bacon lardons. Add 500g of haricot beans soaked overnight and it is the richest thing in Ultimate Comfort Food, at roughly 1,300 calories a serving.

They call it a cross between a cassoulet and Boston baked beans, and say you do not have to be a cowboy to enjoy it. Their own words for it are a big hug of a dish for a winter weekend when it is snowing outside.

The seasoning is deliberately left half-finished. Only half the mustard, sugar and treacle go in during cooking, and you taste and add the rest at the end, because how sweet or sharp it needs to be depends on your sausages.

Hairy Bikers Pork and Bean Casserole

Author: Alex Saidani Cooking Method:Simmering Cuisine:British Courses:Main

Difficulty:BeginnerPrep time: 20 minutesCook time:2 hours 15 minutesRest time: minutesTotal time:2 hours 35 minutesServings:4 servingsCalories:1300 kcal Best Season:Winter

Description

The beans need soaking overnight before you start. Two whole onions studded with cloves cook in with them and come out at the end, when you pull them apart and stir them back through. Four whole garlic cloves get the same treatment, squashed out of their skins.

Ingredients

• 500g haricot beans, soaked overnight in salted water
• 2 small onions, peeled but left whole
• 6 cloves
• 1 carrot, thickly sliced
• 3 bay leaves
• 1 large thyme sprig
• 4 garlic cloves, left whole
• 2 tbsp olive oil
• 8 large sausages or 12 chipolatas
• 500g pork belly, diced
• 150g smoked bacon lardons
• 150ml red wine
• 2 tbsp tomato purée
• 1 to 2 tbsp Dijon mustard
• 1 to 2 tsp light brown soft sugar
• 1 to 2 tbsp treacle
• up to 1 tbsp cider vinegar, optional
• salt and black pepper

Instructions

1. Start the beans: Drain the soaked beans, put them in a large saucepan and cover with water. Add a teaspoon of salt and plenty of pepper. Stud the onions with the cloves and add them with the carrot, bay leaves, thyme and garlic.
2. Simmer them: Bring to the boil, cover and simmer for about 45 minutes. The beans should be close to tender but still quite firm.
3. Brown the meat: While the beans cook, heat a tablespoon of the oil in a large frying pan and fry the sausages on all sides, then lift them out. Add the rest of the oil, sear the diced pork belly until well browned and lift that out too, then quickly fry the bacon lardons.
4. Deglaze: Pour the wine into the pan with the bacon and stir to lift everything off the base. Stir in the tomato purée and half the mustard, sugar and treacle.
5. Combine: Pour the bacon and wine mixture into the pan of beans along with the pork. Slice the sausages and add those too.
6. Long simmer: Partially cover and cook for up to another hour and a half, until the pork is completely tender and the liquid has reduced to a thick sauce.
7. Season to taste: Taste and adjust. You may want more mustard, sugar or treacle, and you can add cider vinegar a teaspoon at a time if it needs sharpening.
8. Finish the onions: Lift out the onions and garlic. Take the cloves out of the onions, pull the onions apart and squash the garlic out of its skins, then stir both back into the pot. Serve piping hot.

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FAQs

Is it really 1,300 calories a serving?

Yes, and it is worth knowing before you start. Five hundred grams of dried beans, 500g of pork belly, eight sausages and 150g of bacon between four people is an enormous amount of food.

Stretching it to six is the easy fix and brings it under 900. The book says four, but it makes a very full pan and nobody will go hungry on a smaller plate.

Do I have to soak the beans overnight?

Yes for this recipe. Dried haricot beans need the soak, and the 45 minutes of simmering afterwards assumes they have had it.

Tinned beans would skip both steps but change the dish, since the beans here cook in water flavoured with cloves, thyme and garlic and take all of that on. Tinned ones arrive already cooked and cannot.

Why put the onions in whole and take them out again?

Because they are doing two jobs. Whole and studded with cloves, they flavour the water the beans cook in without falling apart into the sauce.

At the end you pull them out, remove the cloves and pull the onion apart with your fingers, then stir it back in. Same with the garlic, which you squash out of its papery skins. You get the flavour early and the texture late.

What is the treacle doing?

It is what pulls this towards American baked beans. Treacle, brown sugar and mustard together give that dark sweet-savoury flavour, which is not something you would find in a French bean stew.

Only half goes in during cooking and you adjust at the end. Sausages vary a lot in how sweet and salty they are, so the recipe leaves you room to correct it.

What else is worth making on a cold weekend?

Their oxtail stew is the other long winter braise on the site, three hours on the hob and finished with sweet potato. Worth trying another day rather than alongside this one.

For something far lighter built on the same smoked pork flavour, their lentil and bacon soup uses only 75g of bacon and comes in at 195 calories.