If you’ve been around here for a while, you know that I love beans and greens. I’ve been known to make it with a variety of different varieties of greens, including broccoli rabe and escarole but generally I go with bacon as my salty, meaty addition. Recently, though, I had a hankering for sausage, which coincided with there being an excess of kale and a new variation was born!
This dinner takes 25 minutes – start to finish, and only requires a handful of ingredients. It’s also one of those recipes which comes from the pantry, the freezer and the produce drawer. You know, a little of this, a little of that, stuff that you probably already have on hand. Here’s what you need:
- 3-4 cloves of garlic, minced
- 5-6 sausages – your call on sweet or spicy, chicken or pork
- 1 can of canellini beans – rinsed and drained
- 1 can of chicken broth
- 1 generous bunch of kale, coarsely chopped
- Olive oil, salt & pepper, crushed red pepper flakes
Start with a few tablespoons of olive oil and the garlic in a fairly deep pot. Did I mention this is a one-pot meal? As the garlic lightly browns over low heat, slice sausages into rounds and add to the pot, increasing heat to medium. Another option would be to use loose sausage or remove the casings, breaking sausage up with a wooden spoon as it browns.
When sausage is still a little pink, or slightly undercooked, toss in the kale and chicken broth. Cover and cook until the kale wilts a bit and gets tender. Throw in the beans, heat through, season and enjoy.
