Joshua helped me cook dinner tonight. We made a Cowboy Bean Bake. As we ate the meal together, the name made for an interesting conversation about how cowboys would only be able to carry certain foods with them while they worked at rounding up cattle, travelling on horseback. We couldn't work out how the tomatoes wouldn't get squished in saddlebags. Hmm. Maybe that is why the recipe calls for crushed or chopped tomatoes.
Joshua and Samuel were eager to dig in:
Abigail wasn't too sure at first, but she did ask for seconds later:
Anna couldn't take her eyes off the meal:
And Jeff gave it the thumbs up as well:
Our recipe was adjusted from The Children's Step-by-Step Cook Book. We (mostly) doubled the original recipe and there still weren't any leftovers!
Ingredients:
1 tbsp Olive Oil
2 large onions
450g (16 oz) short back bacon
2 Chorizo sausages
800g (2 lb) can chopped tomatoes
2 tbsp brown sugar
2 tsp Dijon mustard
400g (1 lb) can Red Kidney beans
400g (1 lb) can Borlotti beans
Instructions:
1. Peel the onion and slice it finely. Cut the bacon into small cubes. Cut the sausages into chunky slices.
2. Heat the oil in a deep frypan. Cook the onions, bacon and sausages together until the onions are golden and soft.
3. Tip the beans into a colander and drain them well. If they had salt or sugar added to them in the can, then give them a rinse.
4. Add the chopped tomatoes, brown sugar and mustard to the frypan and stir. Heat the sauce until it is beginning to bubble.
5. Turn the heat down and let the sauce simmer for about one quarter of an hour. Stir it now and then to make sure nothing is sticking.
6. Add the drained beans to the sauce and give everything a good stir. Cook for a few more minutes until the beans are hot, then serve in bowls. Enjoy!
12/21: International Chiasmus Day
11 hours ago
7 comments:
I can't wait to try it out! I loved seeing all the family pictures. Abigail's expression is priceless. Good cooking, Joshua!
Did you use chorizo sausages? Was some of the spice lost in the cooking or should I substitute with normal sausages for my spice fearing child?
Hi Meredith,
We did use two chorizo sausages, although I would probably add more if I was doing it again. I love chorizo! That's the one thing I didn't double from the original recipe. All of my kids gobbled it up with no complaints, and Sam will often balk at similar meals that use spicy salami, so I guess it wasn't very spicy.
One alternative, if you want to keep the flavour, is to cook the chorizo in a separate pan and then add it only to the adult's bowls at the end. We do this with the aforementioned salami dishes. I add spicy salami to ours, and mild to the kids' bowls. Then everyone is happy.
Another alternative is just to use plain thick beef sausages, but I am not sure they would be firm enough to slice before cooking. You might have to cook them, then chop them and add when you add the tomatoes etc.
~ Sharon
Well, we may just give that a go! Probably separate sausages of varying degrees of spice is the ticket! That will solve the problem for one - which is not an unreasonable problem. The presence of vegies with the problem for the other...but maybe the cowboy theme will help...
Meredith,
I have to say, a can of chopped tomatoes and some sliced onion does not count as an unreasonable amount of vegies in our house. Frankly, anything with bacon chopped and cooked in it is going to go down well for our family, and so I can get away with lots more vegetables if I just include bacon.
I think this meal could have more vegetables added in quite easily. Often we add freezer vegies to a pot-cooked meal (corn, peas, julienne carrots and chopped spinach) to pack in the vegetables quickly and without need for chopping. A cup or more of each, and a whole packet of the spinach, is about right. If I did that to this recipe, we just might have had leftovers.
~ Sharon
I use frozen veg like that too to boost things. And don't forget that there were two tins of beans in the original line up!
:-)
Oh yeah, I forgot the beans. I don't include beans in my vegie count because to my mind, they are replacing the pasta or bread or rice or chapati (ie straight carbs) that this sort of meal would normally be served with.
~ Sharon
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