Slow-Simmered Italian Sausage and Mushrooms
Sausage links cooked down in tomato with dried mushrooms until a spoon goes through them.
- calories
- 620
- weight
- 9 oz
- cal / oz
- 69
- protein
- 26 g
- serves
- 4, scales
- prep
- 15 min
- cook
- 75 min
- total time
- 90 min
- water
- 300 ml boiled
- cost
- $$
Calorie and protein figures are my own estimates, good enough for planning a food bag and not meant as precise nutrition data.
- Dinner
- Campfire coals
- Dutch oven
- Liquid fuel
- Car camping
- Basecamp
- Gluten free
- Nut free
- One pot
- Grab and go
- Needs a cooler
- Actual cooking
Ingredients
| Italian sausage links | 1 lb | sweet or hot; links, not loose ground |
|---|---|---|
| Dried mushrooms | 1.5 oz | porcini, shiitake, or whatever is in the bin |
| Garlic | 4 cloves | sliced thin, or 1 tsp granulated |
| Cooking oil | 2 tbsp | |
| Canned whole peeled tomatoes | 28 oz can | |
| Bouillon cube | 1 | chicken |
| Dry white wine | 1/4 cup | optional; beer works |
| Grated parmesan | 1/2 cup | the shelf-stable green-can kind |
| Salt and black pepper | to taste |
Method
- Pour 300 ml of boiling water over the dried mushrooms in a mug or bowl. Leave them 20 minutes. Keep the liquid.
- Crush the tomatoes by hand in the can or a bowl. Squeeze out and discard the worst of the seeds. Too many seeds turn the sauce bitter.
- Heat the oil in a Dutch oven or heavy pot over moderate coals. Brown the sausages on all sides and set them aside.
- Squeeze the mushrooms dry and cook them in the sausage fat until the edges brown. Add the garlic and cook one more minute.
- Add the wine and scrape the bottom of the pot clean. Add the tomatoes, the mushroom soaking liquid poured off the grit, and the crumbled bouillon cube.
- Return the sausages, cover, and hold at a bare simmer for an hour. Coals off to one side, not under the whole pot. Stir every fifteen minutes so the bottom does not scorch.
- Uncover for the last fifteen minutes if the sauce is thin. Salt, pepper, and parmesan over the top.
Sausage links held below a boil for an hour stop being sausages and start being pot roast. The casing keeps them whole while the fat renders into the tomato, which is why loose ground sausage does not work here — it just falls apart into meat sauce. Browning first is not optional either. That crust is most of the flavor in the finished sauce.
Fresh mushrooms are heavy and go slimy in a cooler, so this uses dried ones and their soaking water in place of both the mushrooms and the stock. Pour the soaking liquid off carefully and leave the last spoonful behind; grit settles to the bottom. Parmesan from the shelf-stable can holds up in a hot car better than a wedge does, and it dissolves into the sauce anyway.
Packing
Sausage rides in the cooler; everything else is pantry. Dried mushrooms and the bouillon cube go in one small bag so the mushrooms do not get crushed under the can.
Variations
- Skip the mushrooms and fold in three diced bell peppers and an onion for the last twenty minutes.
- Cook a pot of polenta alongside and spoon the sausages over it.
- Slice the sausages into the sauce and eat it over pasta the second night.
https://foragerchef.com/baked-italian-sausage-and-mushrooms