Cooking on Wood: Vegan Sausage Casserole

On one chilly February day, we fancied a good hearty casserole, one that warms you up all lovely from the inside and makes you want to wrap yourself into a blanket and watch dancing fires in your wood burner or firepit for the rest of the day. We cooked a beautiful vegan sausage casserole in a Hungarian style kotlich with the help of our British kiln dried logs and KindleFlamers and loved every mouthful of it. This recipe will serve eight people so go on, invite some friends over for an outdoor cooking experience.

 

Vegan sausage casserole

Serves 8

Cooking time: 1 hour + prep

 

 

 

 

Step 1:

Prepare all your ingredients as well as your cooking appliances. You will need a kotlich, British kiln dried logs (we recommend Flaming Firewood as logs are smaller and of different shapes and sizes, therefore quicker to get a good fire and easier to control the heat output) and a KindleFlamer natural firelighter – you will only need one to start a fire and no kindling.

Step 2:

Start getting the ingredients for your casserole ready. Set up your kotlich above your firepit and light the fire. 

 

 

Step 3: 

Chop up the onion and the sausages. Pour the oil into the kotlich and let the fire warm it up. Add your onions and cook until golden (you will hear the onions sizzling beautifully with the heat of the fire). Mix occasionally to stop the onion from sticking to the bottom of the kotlich.

 

Step 4:  

Add your chopped sausages and cook until browned. Add beans and crumble in the stock cube. Mix and cook everything for a few minutes, then add the chopped tomatoes and about 1 litre of boiling water to dilute the casserole. Add the smoked paprika, rosemary, salt and pepper and cover with a lid. Mix occasionally and make sure you keep feeding the fire with enough logs to keep the heat on. 

 

 

Step 5:

Mix up three teaspoons of flour and some water in a bowl (you don’t add it directly into the casserole to avoid lumps of flour). Once you have a runny paste, pour that into your casserole to thicken it up. Leave to cook for another 5-10 minutes. The sauce should now be nice and thick, as per image below.

 

 

Step 6: 

Wearing well-insulated gloves, carefully remove your kotlich from the fire.

 

Step 7:

Finally, dish out the casserole and enjoy!  Serve with some nice campfire-cooked bread and enjoy.”