Another Winter Warmer

The other evening, I decided to cook us another warming winter casserole for dinner.  I love one pot cooking as it is so quick and easy and produces a lovely tasty meal at the end of it, with very little effort.  Especially good for those nights when you need to get on and do other things at the same time.

This evening's meal was a Bacon & Bean Casserole with mashed potato.  It is an inexpensive meal in that it only requires quite inexpensive ingredients and does not take as long in the oven as a beef stew for example.

For this dish I used the following ingredients:

A few slices of bacon cut into smallish squares (or you could use lardons/chorizo) - I fry them for a few minutes before adding them to the casserole, but this is optional.
1 onion
1 carrot
1 courgette
400g tin of baked beans
400g tin of butter beans
400g tin of chopped tomatoes
Splash of Worcestershire Sauce
Pinch of Ground Black Pepper (or chilli powder if you want it to have a bit of heat)

Put it all in the casserole dish and place in the oven at 180 degrees for 1-1 1/2 hours, stirring every half hour or so.

This serves 3-4 people depending on portion size.  I cook this for my partner and myself, my daughter doesn't like casseroles or stews unfortunately, and I usually put a portion in the freezer to have on a baked potato on another evening.

You can of course vary this recipe to make it even less expensive by omitting one of  the tins of beans or use dried beans or chick peas (rehydrated) or whatever else you have to hand.  You can of course also make this in a slow cooker and have it cooking while you are out but I haven't tried this myself.

For vegetarians or a meat free meal, you can omit the bacon and just have a bean casserole, possibly using various different types of beans including kidney, chilli for a bit of a kick, or any other beans you might have in your store cupboard.  With all the vegetables and beans this meal is also high in fibre.  I tend to make my mashed potato with the skin on so that this also increases it's fibre content.

It's a good meal for using up store cupboard items and whatever vegetables need using up in the fridge.  Here's a photo, which isn't great due to the quality of the light in my kitchen on an evening, but the dish itself tasted lovely and I was able to feed and walk the puppy while the meal was in the oven.  (Please note that this was my partner's portion which was slightly larger than mine!)