Baked Giant White Beans with Kielbasa
This was an overnight baked recipe and very simple. It comes out fairly low-fat even using full-fat sausage.
* 2 1/4 cups dry giant white beans (or cannelini or any other white bean)
* 1tsp olive or other vegetable oil
* 1 12-oz kielbasa (I used a turkey kielbasa), sliced fairly thin
* 1 lg. onion, diced
* 2 ribs celery, diced
* 6 cloves garlic, crushed
* 1/2 tsp. smoked hot paprika
* 1/2 tsp. sweet hot paprika
* 4 cups good stock; I used homemade turkey stock
* 2 tsp dried thyme
* 1/2 tsp dried rosemary
* ground black pepper (and salt) to taste; may not need salt if you use packaged broth
* (opt) handful chopped parsley
Either soak the beans the night before in water that covers them by two inches, or use the fast-soak method: cover the beans by two inches with cold water, bring to a boil, boil for two minutes, cover the pan and let sit for one hour. Discard soaking liquid.
Pre-heat oven to 225.
In a dutch oven or other heavy oven-safe pan with an oven-safe lid, brown the sausage slices in the olive oil, then add the onions. When the onions go translucent add the garlic and celery and cook another minute or so. Add the stock and stir around the pan to dissolve the caramelization on the pan into the liquid. Add the beans and all herbs but fresh parsley.
Place into the oven at 225 for four hours, then reduce heat to 200 and let bake another six hours. (Or bake for 6 hours at 250.)
In the morning, stir in the parsley.
This would undoubtedly work just fine in a slow-cooker. You could also add tomato paste to it to get the sauce thicker. If you don't have smoked paprika, substitute in normal paprika; if you don't have hot paprika you can use half the amount as cayenne and half the amount as sweet. If you want to enhance the smoky flavor try Worcestershire sauce.
I based this very very loosely on cassoulet, but used paprika as a substitution for tomato paste, and omitted all of the meat and bread crumbs. I used various baked bean recipes to determine good cooking temperatures since I wanted to cook it overnight.
This had good flavor but the sauce was somewhat bland so I think next time I would add a little salt, possibly some tomato paste, wine, or gluten-free Worcestershire sauce, and double the paprika.