Slow Cooker Vegetarian Sausage Casserole

Anyone else feel like the temperature has plummeted?! I am definitely feeling the winter vibes and my slow cooker is getting a very good work out at the moment and I am loving it. Something that has always been a bit of a problem, or since she was 18 months old at least, is that Alyssa is a fussy eater. I think some has stemmed from the fear of not being able to swallow when she was ill and the rest has just happened. I’ve been actively working on this for the past few months and really wanted to get out of the habit of blending things down to hide the ingredients. So, I stopped to think about what she actually does and will sometimes eat and wanted to combine them to make one dish that wasn’t separated or blended and came up with this. Here is my recipe for Slow Cooker Vegetarian Casserole which is easy, quick, tasty and so delicious that even Alyssa couldn’t resist it!

Ingredients (serves 4-6)

12 Vegetarian Sausages ( we used Quorn)

3 Large Potatoes, peeled and cubed

3 Large Carrots, peeled and large chunks

1 White onion, diced

2 garlic cloves, crushed

1 Tin of Butter Beans in water

1 Tin of Chopped Tomatoes

2 Tbsp of Tomato Puree

2 Tbsp of Worcestershire Sauce ( a vegetarian one is available from Asda)

500ml of Vegetable Stock

2 Tsp of Mixed Herbs

Olive Oil

Salt and Pepper

Method:

1. Put the olive oil in the bottom of the dish then pop all of the ingredients into the slow cooker, there is no need to brown the sausages before putting them in but if you’d like to you can, however I think that the juices of the stew soak into the sausages better if they are unbrowned and it doesn’t make them fall apart.
2. Once all the ingredients are in, give it a mix and cook on high for 4 hours.
3. Season and cook on low for another hour or until ready to serve. This last step can be skipped as it will be cooked after 4 hours BUT the longer it cooks, the more flavour there will be!

We served ours with crusty bread and butter and the little one LOVED it! I always try and add something new to each dish she tries and the butter beans were new but she ate them all up and mopped up the liquid with her bread. A super healthy and nutritious meal that warmed us up from the inside out. We even had some leftover, so we popped this into some containers and froze it for another day!

Don’t be scared to add other ingredients – a cup of frozen peas, some parsnip or swede or even stir some spinach leaves in at the last minute. To make this non-vegetarian, simply use some pork sausages but brown them off first before popping in and use chicken stock!