Hot Italian Sausage with Lentils

Coming up with meals that are relatively high in protein and low in carbohydrates is sometimes tough when you don’t want to eat just a steak or a chicken breast.

That’s why I leave it to the pros. If you follow Gordon Ramsay on twitter, there’s a good chance that, on any given Friday, he’s going to dump a photo and recipe that fits the bill.

Weeks back, he posted a recipe that I needed to try!

When I read it and saw the picture, I finally realized that stuffed lentils isn’t the only thing you can make with lentils!

To get started, I laid out my ingredients.

Instead of bacon lardons, I fried up some pieces of guanciale, because that’s what I had.

After these crisped up nice, I added my diced onion and carrot along with the bay leaves.

After a magical pot change, I added the lentils (a full pound – I went with regular green lentils rather than put out effort to find puy lentils – I’m sure I also saved money) and added just enough water to cover along with some salt and pepper.

Once the water came to the boil, I covered it and moved on to the sausage.

I fried up a smashed garlic clove in a few tablespoons of olive oil.

In the meantime, I separated the tied sausages into links and discarded the string.

These went into the hot oil…

…and I browned them up real nice.

Once browned, I added enough white wine to come up the sausages about halfway.

I allowed this to cook on a low-medium heat for about 20 minutes. At that point, the white wine should start to coat the back of a spoon almost like a sauce.

The lentils and sausage were ready at just the same time, but, for good measure, I added the sausages to the pot with the lentils and nestled them in to allow the flavors from the sausage to start to enter the lentils.

To serve it up, I put about 3/4 cup of the cooked lentils on the plate and nestled 3 sausages on top. I garnished with (too much) parsley, and then enjoyed the meal.

What I liked about it was that the lentils had a persistent texture that was almost like rice in a way. Taken along with the spicy sausages, there was plenty of flavor in the lentils themselves, and occasionally, I hit a carrot or lardon that added some variety to every bite. This one is definitely getting filed in the High Energy cookbook, and is something I look forward to making again. Maybe next time with my own homemade Italian sausage, not that I even think mine could be as good as Dad’s or anything…


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3 thoughts on “Hot Italian Sausage with Lentils

  • Katherine

    Hey there! I hooked into your lovely blog because you had enjoyed a meal at All Good Bakers, featuring my seitan. Ever thought about subbing some Three Smiles Kitchen Seitan Italian Sausage for that sausage up there? Might be reeeeeeally good! Just sayin’. You might want to check out our stuff: Facebook.com/threesmiles. And it’s sold at the Delmar Health Hut in, of course, Delmar.


    • derryX

      I honestly have never tried anything made with seitan. I’m looking forward to going back to AGB to try it! Maybe if I taste their preparation, I might be inspired to try it in my own cooking…

      Thanks for stopping by and I’ll be on the lookout for those products! 🙂


  • CP

    This looks amazing — it’s on the list!



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