The beans do not go in until the last twenty minutes of Hairy Bikers sausage and bean casserole. Sausages, onions, butternut squash and bacon roast on their own for half an hour first, then the beans and sauce are poured around them. It is called sausage and bean supper in One Pot Wonders and feeds four at about 585 calories.
They call it a grown-up version of those little tins of beans and sausages they both loved as kids. The bacon and barbecue sauce are what give it the smoky, savoury smell they describe.
One roasting tin does the whole job, in two stages. Everything goes in dry for the first half hour, then the sauce is poured around and it goes back for twenty minutes more.
Hairy Bikers Sausage and Bean Casserole
Description
Two tins of haricot beans go in with passata, garlic and Worcestershire sauce, mixed together before they are poured round the sausages. Butternut squash and onion wedges roast alongside and soften into the sauce. It bakes at 200°C in two stages.
Ingredients
Instructions
- Heat the oven: Preheat to 200°C, fan 180°C, gas 6.
- Fill the tin: Put the sausages, onions, squash and bacon lardons into a roasting tin. Sprinkle over the sage, season with salt and pepper and drizzle with the olive oil.
- Roast for 30 minutes: The onions and squash should be soft and browning at the edges, and the sausages will have a brown crust underneath.
- Mix the sauce: Turn the sausages over. Stir the beans, passata, garlic, barbecue sauce and Worcestershire sauce together and season with salt and pepper.
- Add it to the tin: Pour the mixture around the sausages, then stir, making sure the onions, bacon and squash are not stuck to the base.
- Roast for 20 minutes more: The sauce will have reduced a little around the beans and should be bubbling.
FAQs
Why do the beans go in so late?
Because they are already cooked and only need heating through. Twenty minutes in the sauce is enough for them to take on the smoky flavours without losing their shape.
The passata benefits too. An hour in a hot oven would reduce it too far and catch on the tin, whereas twenty minutes leaves it bubbling and just thick enough.
Butternut squash in a sausage casserole?
It earns its place. Thirty minutes of dry roasting gives the squash browned edges and a sweetness that works against the smoky bacon.
It also softens into the sauce during the second stage, which thickens it. That is why this needs no flour or stock.
Do I need to brown the sausages first?
No, and that is the point of a tray bake. They go in raw and roast for thirty minutes, developing a crust underneath while everything else cooks around them.
Turning them at the halfway point is the one thing not to skip, since the second side then browns in the sauce. Their sausage casserole does the opposite, frying the sausages gently for ten minutes before anything else happens.
Can I make this in a slow cooker?
I would not, and this is the one recipe of theirs where a slow cooker makes it worse. The whole first stage is dry roasting at 200°C to brown the squash and put a crust on the sausages, and a slow cooker cannot do either.
You would end up with pale sausages and soft squash sitting in a thin sauce. Their sausage casserole is the one to convert instead, since that one is browned in a pan first and then simmered, which a slow cooker handles well.
How is this different from their other bean and sausage dishes?
This one is the quickest, at just over an hour in a single tin. Their pork and bean casserole takes two and a half hours and uses dried haricot beans soaked overnight.
That one is a weekend job with pork belly and eight sausages. This is a Tuesday, and the beans come out of a tin.
