One‑Pan Sausage and Sweet Potato Casserole — Quick & Comforting

 

If you’re looking for an easy, comforting, one‑dish supper that practically cooks itself, this Sausage & Sweet Potato Casserole is the kind of recipe you’ll want in your weeknight rotation. A vintage recipe taken from an old cookbook, it is hearty, flavorful, and wonderfully simple — just good ingredients layered together and baked until everything is tender, caramelized, and delicious. 

Sweet potatoes bring natural warmth, sliced apple and onion a delicious sweetness, the sausage adds savory richness, and the whole dish comes together with minimal prep and even less fuss. Perfect for busy days, small households, or anyone who loves a cozy, no‑stress meal that tastes like far more effort than it takes.

 

This recipe I am sharing today comes from Ida Allen Bailey's cookery book entitled "Money Saving Cookbook."  Originally published in the 1950's it was a part of an Essential Home Library. My copy was my mother's copy. It was a book I devoured when I was a child and that I often took out to read as an adult when I would come home to visit. She finally gave it to me and I was thrilled.

The recipes are old, but still quite practical.  Timings can be a bit off as it often the case in some of these older recipe books.  They tended to cook things for quite a bit longer back then, especially vegetables and meat. I find that you can usually adapt those things to modern tastes and methods. I love these old recipes.  They are usually quite simple and easy to do, and can quite easily be played with just a bit.

This recipe today was quite delicious just as is and would be even more so with a few simple changes as noted below. The flavors were spot on.  Tender melt-in-the-mouth slices of sweet potato, onion and apple with some tasty sausages baked on top.  Aside from the seasonings, only four simple ingredients required.

Delicious, economical and sized  just for two, although it could very simply be multiplied to serve more. This is one tasty entree that I think most people would enjoy!  I recommend!

 

INGREDIENTS NEEDED TO MAKE

SAUSAGE & SWEET POTATO CASSEROLE

Simple ingredients and not a lot of them. This is a small batch recipe feeding 2 people. Amounts could be easily doubled to feed four.

• 4 small sausages
• 1 medium sweet potato, peeled and thinly sliced (about 1 1/2 cups)
• 1/2 of a small onion, peeled and thinly sliced
• 1 small apple, peeled and thinly sliced
• salt and black pepper to taste
• 1/2 cup (120ml) hot water
• 1/2 TBS soft light brown sugar

 

NOTES ON INGREDIENTS

• I used a good quality, locally produced, Sweet Onion Sausage.  They were rather long and thin. So I twisted two of them in half  and cut them in order to make four smallish sausages. You do want a nicely flavored sausage for this due to the simplicity of the ingredients.
• My sweet potato was about the size of a large baking potato. Six inches long and about 3 inches across. I cut mine too thin, only 1/4 inch thick. Next time I would cut them between 1/3 and 1/2 inch thick. I would still slice the apple and the onion thinly.
• I used a sweet eating apple. You could use a tart cooking one if you wish. The apple went very well with both the sweet potatoes and the flavor of the pork sausage.
• I used boiling water, but I also think a good quality stock would work well in it's place. I don't think you really need the full 1/2 cup. I would go with 1/4 cup (60ml) the next time for this number of servings.
• The brown sugar added a hint of sweetness which also went very well with the pork, the potatoes and the apples. I was worried that it might be too sweet, but it wasn't.

 

HOW TO MAKE

SAUSAGE & SWEET POTATO CASSEROLE

Simple and easy to make. Quality ingredients, simply put together in a most delicious way.

1. Preheat the oven to 400*F/200*C/ gas mark 6. Butter a small casserole dish. (The original recipe said to butter the dish with sausage fat or drippings.)
2. Prepare your vegetables and fruit. (I cut mine really thin for this. In retrospect I perhaps should have left them a bit thicker as they were almost melted in the cook time.)
3. Put half of the sweet potatoes into the casserole dish. Season lightly and top with 1/2 of the onion, the apple, the other half of the onion and the remaining half of the sweet potato. Lightly season again. Add the hot water. (I used salt and white pepper. A bit of fresh herbs would be nice, such as thyme or sage.)
4. Cover tightly and bake in the preheated oven for 30 minutes. (I would check it at 20 minutes and if the sweet potatoes are softened then I would proceed as per the remainder of the recipe.)
5. While they are baking, lightly brown the sausages in a skillet. (They don't need to be overly brown or cooked all the way through as you will be cooking them again in the oven.)
6. Remove the casserole from the oven and uncover. Sprinkle the brown sugar over top evenly and top with the lightly browned sausages. (Again, don't overbrown your sausages.)
7. Return to the oven for a further 10 to 15 minutes, until golden brown and cooked through.

 

MY RECIPE NOTES

This was lovely just as is. I love old fashioned recipes like this one which use relatively few ingredients and that don't require a lot of intricate steps, ingredients or instructions.  I do think that the timings as per the recipe could be cut back a bit. My sweet potatoes were very soft by the end of the half hour. Perhaps I cut them too thin.  

Also my meat got a little dark, so I perhaps had browned them a bit too much in the skillet.  When browning them, bear in mind that they will be cooking for an additional fifteen minutes in a fairly hot oven so they don't really need to be all that brown, unless you are using very thick sausages in which case you would want to cook them almost all the way through.

Overall though this was a delicious recipe and I would make it again!  I think both the sausages and the sweet potato mixture would be lovely served with a smidge of grainy mustard on the side!

 

SUGGESTIONS FOR SERVING

This is a really simple meal that would be delicious served with rice, a baked potato, or noodles on the side. You could add a green vegetable or salad to the plate for some color and an additional one of your five a day.  Broccoli would be nice as would green beans.

The original recipe was for twice the amount. I cut the recipe in half. You could double everything to feed more people. Cook times would remain the same. I think you could also add some herbs to the layers of sweet potato, apple and onion.  A bit of thyme or sage would be lovely.

I recommend using a well flavored sausage. I used Sweet Onion Sausages from D'Aubin Family Meats which is located just down the road from me in Bridgetown here in Nova Scotia. They were excellent. Just a bit spicy which went well with the flavor of the sweet potatoes and the sweetness from the apple.

 

A FEW OTHER SAUSAGE

RECIPES FOR YOU TO ENJOY

Sausages are still a fairly economical protein to use in today's economy. Here are a few other ways that we enjoy them!

ITALIAN SAUSAGE MEATBALLS -  Begin with a good sweet Italian Sausage. This gets removed from the skins and mixed together with grated onion, dry breadcrumbs, an egg and a splash of cream before shaping into meatballs that are soft, juicy and beautifully seasoned without any fuss.  The grated onion keeps them moist and tender, while the cream adds a lovely richness. Roasted in a hot oven until golden, sizzling and perfectly cooked through in just 20 minutes. Browned and incredibly juicy, these are delicious all on their own but are lovely with gravy or tucked into your favorite sauce. 

SHEET PAN SAUSAGE & PEPPERS -  This tasty dish is everything a busy‑day supper should be: quick, colorful, deeply flavorful, and almost effortless. Everything goes onto one tray, bakes together, and comes out caramelized, golden, and delicious with hardly any cleanup at all. Thick slices of smoked sausage, sweet red and yellow peppers, and plenty of onion are tossed with a little olive oil, salt, and pepper, then roasted until the edges turn sticky, sweet, and beautifully caramelized — that magical transformation you love about roasted vegetables. Hearty and satisfying without a lot of fuss!

 

 

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Yield: 2 servings

Author: Marie Rayner

Sausage & Sweet Potato Casserole

Prep time: 15 MinCook time: 45 MinTotal time: 1 Hour

A vintage recipe from a vintage cookbook for a simple, yet delicious casserole that is quick and easy to put together and other than a few seasonings and water, uses only 4 simple ingredients!

Ingredients

• 4 small sausages
• 1 medium sweet potato, peeled and thinly sliced (about 1 1/2 cups)
• 1/2 of a small onion, peeled and thinly sliced
• 1 small apple, peeled and thinly sliced
• salt and black pepper to taste
• 1/2 cup (120ml) hot water
• 1/2 TBS soft light brown sugar

Instructions

1. Preheat the oven to 400*F/200*C/ gas mark 6. Butter a small casserole dish.
2. Prepare your vegetables and fruit.
3. Put half of the sweet potatoes into the casserole dish. Season lightly and top with 1/2 of the onion, the apple, the other half of the onion and the remaining half of the sweet potato. Lightly season again. Add the hot water.
4. Cover tightly and bake in the preheated oven for 30 minutes.
5. While they are baking, lightly brown the sausages in a skillet.
6. Remove the casserole from the oven and uncover. Sprinkle the brown sugar over top evenly and top with the lightly browned sausages.
7. Return to the oven for a further 10 to 15 minutes, until golden brown and cooked through.

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