Even though I'm simmering sausage (veal + pork) in vermouth as I write this, I've not been eating much sausage of late. It would be tasty in the winter, and it is tasty in the winter. So I don't know what I've been up to, making soup without browned sausage. But Ben and Glenda are saving me from shame by providing what looks like an amazingly delicious cassoulet (let's be honest, it's a casserole. It just definitely doesn't have Fritos sprinkled on top!) for your wurst pleasure. Here we go!
Glenda writes: "Cassoulet is a traditional French dish, basically a bean and pork stew that takes three days to make and tastes like ... magic. Succulent tender sausage and duck confit, creamy beans, a crisp crust made from bread crumbs -- perfection! Following a recipe in Cooks Illustrated, we made it in four and a half hours instead of three days, and were delighted with our creation. The beans were deliciously smooth after soaking overnight in salt water (their skin shrank at first, making me afraid we'd already ruined the meal! By the morning the beans had calmed down and their skin was smooth again. Whew!). We cooked the beans with salt pork and bratwurst, which is the best substitution for fancy French sausage that we couldn't get/afford in Minnesota. Having never worked with uncooked sausage before, it was something of an adventure to cook them, especially since they were sooo slippery and weirdly water-logged after we parboiled them.
In what some may think is a sacrilegious move, we didn't include confit, because learning how to make one thing at a time seemed like a good idea. Also, the salt pork was also an experience, but not sausage related so I won't go into it here. Suffice it to say, it is sort of icky.
Finally, crucial to our success was the new Dutch oven we bought just for this dish. Thank you, Dutch oven!"
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