Spicy Beef Sausage, Taters, & Random Veggies

[Omegaman 3.0]

     I decided to try something different (for me anyway, but I am so new to this kind of cooking, it is all new). I recently tried a recipe, that I have to consider a failure, in that I would not make it to serve to others. However, if you learn something from it, it is not all lost. That one was some cuts of beef, and some vegetables that I had, but the meat turned out bland, and so did the vegetables for the most part. I had cut some potatoes in that attempt, and they turned out great.

     So, for this recipe, I wanted to have potatoes again, and vegetables, and meat also. I decided, that I would use cheap meat again, but this time, something I could not get wrong. The vegetables, I would also to differently. This is what happened (4 Servings by the way):
I used some red potatoes, which I cut up into small pieces, as well as some small potatoes, which I left whole. To me, these were the basis of the meal, so I have 1 ½ pounds of them. I scrounged around the refrigerator, so see what else was in there that I could use, you can see from the picture what I added.  I added enough assorted vegetable, to add another ½ pound. Some minutes later, I found a larger red (purple) onion that I took part of and chopped into small pieces. I did not weigh the onion pieces, but you can see about how much I used from the picture.

     I used 1 cup of chicken broth, left over from a previous meal and put that into the bottom of the multi-cooker. I added all of the potatoes to the broth.

     Next, I placed four hot beef sausage links on top of the potatoes. See below:

     Last time I did veggies in the pressure cooker mode of the multi-cooker, they came out as bland as if they had been cooked in a crock pot for hours, not acceptable to me. I will say though, that they stayed firm, unlike they would have in a crock pot for hours. In a crock pot, I always add the veggies near the end of the cooking, to that they do not cook too long and lose their flavors.
To get around the veggies losing their individual flavors in the multi-cooker, I put them into a collapsible colander, so that they were about the other ingredients, above the liquid, so they would be more or less steamed.

     Finally, I closed the lid on the unit and manually set it to pressure cook on high, for 10 minutes. As soon as that 10 minutes was up, I turned the unit off and opened the vent valve on the lid, and let the pressure out. I lifted the colander of vegetables out, pull out the sausage links, and took them to a cutting board and cut them into bite size pieces.

     Originally I had planned, to take the links and either brown them on the bottom of the multi-cooker, or just to that in a skillet. However, since the sausage skins were so “air-tight”, they burst from internal steam pressure (I guess), I just cut them up, and they tasted just fine that way. However, in the future, I think I might puncture the sausage casings to see if that keeps them from splitting.
     That left just the potatoes sitting in the broth, so I went back to them and rescued them using a straining spoon. I mixed the potatoes and the sausage pieces together, and place a serving on a plate, with the vegetable separate. I added to this, some pleasant looking, grainy French bread, and called that a meal.

It was all good as is, but the vegetables needed a little help for my taste, so I added some garlic butter, and some lemon juice to them, but not all in the same place, to there was more  variety in the flavors of the veggies, that was good. Some of the whole potatoes split their skins. To me, that is a good thing, it allows more flavor from the broth to get into the potatoes. I think I also will add some extra seaoning to the broth next time. However, if one is cooking for several people, you might not want to do that, and instead allow them to season their own potatoes to taste on their plates. That is also more efficent, since you end up tossing the seaonings out with the left over broth. On the other hand, you could make a gravy out of the broth, and I would bet that would be delicious. Maybe next time I will so that.

Some people would prefer to peel the potatoes first, and that would be fine. Personally though, I prefer the skins, I like the taste, the texture, and the appearance, and I do not want to toss out their nutritional value.

I don't think I would really call this a favorite recipe (yet), but I would do it again, and I think I will be able to improve with more experience with this method of cooking.

Thanks for viewing my post. If you like it, consider commenting or giving it a thumps up reaction or something. I takes a fair amount of effort to write this up, take and edit the pictures etc., and if no one really cares, then I need not waste any time. I realize that not many will see this at first, but still, any encouragement is a good think IF you like this sort of thing.

 

[Omegaman 3.0]

Have since tried these finished ingredients in three other ways. I have used them in tacos and burritos, adding cheddar and jack cheeses and taco sauce in the tacos, and adding pickled jalapeños, salsa verde, and cheeses to the burritos, and with the addition of fried or scrambled eggs for breakfast burritos. All were pretty good!

Also of note . . . I have since tried cooking these same sausages in the cooker at 10 minutes of high pressure, with them in a colander to keep them out of the water I used in the bottom of the cooker. This time, I poked three holes in the sausages in order to vent internal steam pressure from exploding the sausages. Seemed like a good idea, but it did not work.