ITALIAN SAUSAGE STEW

Italian sausage stew a one pan meal

Meat and vegetables simmered in a tomato and garlic sauce

This is one of Ricky’s recipes and he calls it sausage cacciatore. Cacciatore is a Mediterranean term for catch of the day. His parents were Sicilian and his cooking is very Mediterranean. Like all people of our parents age group, regardless of what part of the world they came from, they knew how to put together a meal with what was on hand. So while he calls it a cacciatore, my family of Anglo heritage would consider this Italian sausage meal in a skillet, a stew. It has potatoes and green beans like a more conventional stew but is simmered in a tomato and garlic sauce. Either way our catch of the day is Italian sausages 🙂 and it’s great no matter what you call it.

If you are always looking for another way to get your Italian sausage fix like I am, this recipe is one to try. Serve this dish with a crusty loaf of bread, rolls or biscuits to sop up the excess sauce, and have some freshly grated parmesan cheese and maybe some red pepper flakes at the table.

This is a simple recipe with simple ingredients. With not much planning or effort you can have a savory, satisfying and economical home cooked meal.

Here’s what YOU WILL NEED:

About the ingredients

Fennel seed

I add fennel seed to this recipe. You can find it most anywhere you buy your spices. Fennel seed is the flavor that distinguishes Italian sausages from other kinds. It’s one of the reasons I like Italian sausages so much so I have it on hand to add to dishes like this. You don’t need it. You will have fennel flavor from the sausage anyway. But if you want to get an extra blast of fennel flavor, add 1/4 teaspoon to the recipe.

Your garlic should be minced. That means you should cut it into a very small chop so you get some in every bite. We have a post on mincing if you want to read more about it Slice Dice Mince and Chop.

This is WHAT TO DO:

Prepare the ingredients

Trim and cut the green beans

Chop the potatoes

You should chop your potatoes into relatively large bite sized pieces. The potatoes are more porous than the green beans and will cook faster because of that. So cutting the potatoes in larger pieces and your green beans in smaller ones will help with having them fully cooked at the same time.

You don’t need to peel the potatoes but wash them well. Leaving the skin on saves time and the peel has nutrients you would otherwise be throwing away.

Mince the garlic

We are going to mince the garlic cloves. You can use jarred minced garlic if you want, just make sure you check the bottle to find the equivalent amount to a clove of garlic. The bottle I have in my refrigerator now is 1/2 teaspoon = one clove. The equivalent amount can vary depending on the size of the chop so don’t make assumptions.

Crush the tomatoes by hand

Pour the canned tomatoes in a bowl. Crush the tomatoes by hand in the sauce they are packed in. This will give you some chunks of tomato in the finished stew which will give it a little more texture and a very fresh taste.

Now our ingredients are ready

Time to start cooking

Brown the sausages

Use a heavy bottomed 10 or 12 inch skillet. Add enough olive oil to cover the bottom of the skillet and let it warm up on medium high heat. Add the sausage links and sauté until brown. When browned but not fully cooked remove them from the skillet and put aside. We will finish cooking them while they are simmering in the tomato sauce.

Save some clean up by using a splatter screen

When you are sautéing or frying on the stovetop you should never put a lid on the skillet. Moisture starts to build up if you don’t have air circulation and you end up steaming whatever is in the skillet. Steaming and sautéing/frying give drastically different results. A splatter screen put over the skillet allows the air flow you need but helps to keep grease from splattering all over.

The browning on the bottom of the skillet is a good thing

There will be residue on the bottom of the skillet from cooking the sausages. This is called a fond. Some of the reason you sauté a meat first when making a dish is to get this fond. It is loaded with flavor.

Sauté the minced garlic

Remove the sausage from the skillet, and add the chopped garlic to the drippings. Move the garlic around in the skillet for about a minute until tender but not browned.

Add the crushed tomatoes

Now we will add the hand crushed tomatoes, juice and all to the skillet and mix it into the oil and garlic. As we mix we want to get all the browning on the bottom of the pan into the sauce. That is called deglazing. This is where you are going to capture all that added flavor. A wooden spoon is the best tool for this for lots of reasons but in this dish more so than others. The tomato sauce can react to certain metals and distort the taste.

Cut the cooled sausages into 1 inch pieces

When the sausages have cooled, slice the browned sausages into one inch pieces.

Add the rest of the ingredients

We are ready to add the trimmed green beans, potato, spices and sliced sausages to the skillet. Stir to incorporate.

Simmer

Put a cover on the skillet and simmer until potatoes and green beans are tender, usually about 45 minutes depending on how large the vegetable pieces are and how tender you like your vegetables. A simmer will have bubbles rising continuously to the top with a few popping open at a time. Simmering will cook the vegetables without turning the potatoes to mush and finish cooking the sausage.

Serve

Serve in a rimmed dish or bowl with bread, rolls or biscuits to sop up the sauce. Top with grated parmesan cheese.