Yummy Sausage Casserole Recipe

Mellissa McNaughton
Apr 9, 2021
3 min read

Willow is a good little eater but one of her favourite foods since she first started eating has to be sausages. I know it can be a struggle to get toddlers and preschoolers to eat but I am a firm believer in children eating as many of the same meals as their parents as possible. I think that if you give them a wide and diverse range of things to eat while they are young then they are less likely to be afraid to try new foods as they get older. So with that in mind, I thought I would start a little series of posts on some of the recipes that I cook and have found are delicious for us adults and that Willow is happy to eat as well.

Starting off with my signature sausage casserole recipe. My top tip on this one is to use as good quality sausages as you can. If the sausages have a nice flavour to them to begin with, it will add so much to the dish as a whole. This time I used Aldi's specially selected caramelised onion and pork sausages which are super delicious and they really added that extra something to the dish.

I am also aware that there is red wine in this recipe and you may feel a bit strange about giving it to a child but rest assured that the wine cooks in this for so long that any alcohol content is cooked off well before it is served. It's similar to cooking with red wine vinegar or a stockpot. It's perfectly fine for kids.

Another tip I found really helpful when cooking is to invest (again if you can afford to) in some decent quality cast iron cookware. I used my cast iron casserole dish to cook this and it comes out much tastier than it used to before I bought the dish.

This is my favourite dish for cooking Casseroles in, it's really heavy and big and beautiful.

Okay, let's share this recipe. I hope you enjoy it.

Sausage Casserole

Serves 4 Prep time - 8-10 mins Cooking time - 1 hour

Ingredients

1tsp Vegetable oil
8 good quality pork Sausages
1 large onion diced
2 or 3 carrots diced
3 garlic cloves (or lazy squeezy garlic)
1tsp dried thyme
150ml red wine
200ml chicken stock
400g can chopped tomatoes
400g can of mixed beans
salt and pepper

Method

Pop your oil in a large cast-iron casserole dish and put on medium heat, add the sausages and fry until well coloured on the outside.
Remove the sausages and set them aside temporarily.
Put the onion and carrot into the pan and fry over a medium heat for around about 8 minutes.
Add the dried thyme and garlic and fry for another 2 or 3 minutes.
At this point put your sausages back into the dish and pour over the red wine, you then want to bring that to the boil and once the red wine has reduced by about half then pour in the stock too.
Season with your salt and pepper and bring back to the boil
Once it's boiling pop on a lid and reduce the heat, it will need to be simmered for about 10 minutes or until the vegetables are starting to soften.
Now add the tomatoes and the beans and continue simmering for another 20 minutes.
Then take off the lid and simmer for 15 more minutes to thicken up the sauce.