Spicy Black Bean and Sausage Stew
Canned beans, chiles, and hard sausage simmered down at the truck. Heat comes from the tomatoes.
- calories
- 520
- weight
- 11 oz
- cal / oz
- 47
- protein
- 29 g
- serves
- 5, scales
- prep
- 5 min
- cook
- 45 min
- total time
- 50 min
- water
- none
- 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
- Liquid fuel
- Canister stove
- Car camping
- Basecamp
- Canoe / raft
- Gluten free
- Dairy free
- Nut free
- One pot
- Grab and go
- Shelf stable
- Basic
Ingredients
| Canned black beans | 2 cans (15 oz each) | do not drain, the liquid thickens the pot |
|---|---|---|
| Canned diced tomatoes with green chiles | 1 can (10 oz) | mild if you want to eat it twice |
| Canned or boxed chicken stock | 2 cans (about 3 cups) | |
| Smoked sausage | 1 lb | shelf-stable summer sausage or kielbasa, diced |
| Canned chicken | 1 can (12.5 oz) | optional, or use half sausage and half chicken |
Method
- Dice the sausage into coins and brown it dry in the pot. Nothing else goes in yet.
- Add the beans with their liquid, the tomatoes and chiles, and the stock. Stir once.
- Bring it up, then back the heat off until it barely moves. Over a fire, that means pulling the pot to the edge of the coals.
- Simmer 45 minutes at minimum. An hour or two is better and does not hurt it. Stir every so often so the bottom does not scorch.
- If you are adding canned chicken, stir it in for the last ten minutes. It shreds to nothing if it cooks the whole time.
This is a car-camping pot, not a trail meal. Everything in it is canned, which is heavy but means nothing spoils and nothing needs a cooler. The whole thing works because you are not really cooking so much as holding it hot until the sausage fat, the bean starch, and the chile liquid stop being three separate things.
The long simmer is doing the work. Twenty minutes gets you warm canned beans. Forty-five gets a stew with body. The heat level comes entirely from which can of tomatoes and chiles you grabbed, so decide that in the grocery store, not in camp. Browning the sausage first is the one step worth not skipping: it renders fat into the pot that carries the smoke flavor everywhere else.
Packing
All cans, no repacking. A can opener is the only tool that can strand this recipe, so pack two or use pull-tab cans.
Variations
- Cut the stock with one can and add a cup of instant rice at the end for a thicker, heavier pot.
- Skip the meat entirely, double the beans, and add a tablespoon of smoked paprika and a spoon of oil.
- At home, run the whole batch through a dehydrator and it rehydrates into a backpacking dinner in about fifteen minutes.
https://camprecipes.com/classic-recipes/spicy-black-bean-sausage-stew