Cousin Venny's Sausage Stew
Cold day here with a bit of snow on the way so thought about making something savory and somewhat sweet. Before we moved back down south there was a place in Chelmsford called cousin vinny's... i think another one in hanmer too. I just use the play on words to get my kids to eat the damn food instead of asking for kraft dinner.
anyways, i have some venison sausage stew done in my instant pot. a good time saver, along with a quick oven bannock. here's the recipe.
The Stew:
2 lbs venison sausage (garlic or honey garlic will do).
3 large turnips
2 medium onions
half a pound of carrots
half a head of celery
1 litre chicken or beef stock
4 tablespoons of cornstarch or flour
1 tablespoon garlic
1/2 cup brown sugar
2 tablespoons of wash-yer-sister-sauce
1 tablespoon of Italian seasoning
Maple Syrup (for browning sausage)
To begin, cut your sausage while raw into 1/4 inch slices and brown them in the instant pot with olive oil. Use the saute setting and wait until it says hot before throwing in your meat. as they begin to brown, splash with maple syrup. The real stuff is preferred, the darker the better but you can cheap out with aunt J's stuff i guess.
Chop up your turnip into cubes and slice your onion and celery as you wish. Then go ahead and cut your carrot into 1/8 inch slices. throw that all in the pot with your cooking sausage. oh, make sure you know that turnips need to be peeled.
once it's all in, throw in your stock, brown sugar and spices. set the IP to 30 minutes on high pressure.
While that is going, throw together a quick bannock. here's my go to...
Oven Bannock
3 cups flour
3 tablespoons baking powder
2 teaspoons of salt
1/4 cup lard. I render pork fat because it gives it a better taste but you can do oil or butter i guess. crisco if you have that too.
2/3 cup water
mix dry ingredients and then work the lard in. work it into a crumble and then slowly add water. knead the dough and then make about 8 small baseball sized buns out of it. smack them down as they are going to rise. Pop those bad boys into a 425 oven for about 12 minutes.
If you time it right, at about 10 minutes left of the pressure cycle you can put the bannock in and have them both ready at about the same time. At that point release the steam and don't F*#K around with the lid as I heard a few people have been scalded by misuse. let it all out and then when the little red nipple falls down, you are good to go. cut the Bannock in half and throw some butter on or just dip into the bowl like we all do. You'll notice that the sausage is super tender. Pressure cookers are a dream for that aspect.
Enjoy!
