| Level: | Intermediate |
| Total: | 5 hr 45 min |
| Prep: | 1 hr 25 min |
| Cook: | 4 hr 20 min |
| Yield: | 8 to 10 servings |
Ingredients
- 1 pound dried great Northern beans, picked over and rinsed
- 4 whole cloves
- 1 large onion, halved
- 4 carrots, halved crosswise
- 2 stalks celery, halved crosswise
- 1/4 pound pancetta, diced
- 3 sprigs thyme
- 3 sprigs parsley
- 3 bay leaves
- Kosher salt
- 1 1/2 pounds sweet Italian sausage, pricked with a fork
- 2 heads garlic (unpeeled), top 1/2 inch trimmed
- 2 1/2 pounds boneless leg of lamb or pork shoulder, trimmed and cut into 1 1/2-inch cubes
- 1 1/2 teaspoons sugar
- 1 teaspoon dried oregano
- 1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
- 1/2 teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg
- 1/4 teaspoon ground cloves
- 1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper
- 3 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
- Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper
- 3/4 pound pancetta, diced
- 1 onion, chopped
- 4 cloves garlic, smashed
- 1 14-ounce can whole San Marzano tomatoes, crushed
- 1 1/2 cups dry white wine
- 1 tablespoon tomato paste
- 1/2 ounce (about 1/2 cup) dried porcini mushrooms, rinsed
- 1 wide strip orange zest
- 3 cups cubed day-old sourdough bread
Instructions
- Make the beans: Put the beans in a large pot and add enough cold water to cover by 2 inches; bring to a boil and cook 5 minutes. Remove from the heat, cover and let stand 1 hour, then drain. Stick the whole cloves into the onion halves; add to the pot along with the carrots, celery and pancetta. Wrap the thyme, parsley and bay leaves in a piece of cheesecloth, tie with kitchen twine and add to the pot; cover with water by 1 inch. Bring to a boil, reduce the heat to medium, cover and simmer 1 hour. Add 1 teaspoon salt.
- Nestle the sausage in the beans; add water to cover, if necessary. Add the garlic heads, cut-side down. Cover and cook until the beans are just tender but still hold their shape, turning the sausage halfway through, 20 to 30 minutes. Uncover and let cool to room temperature; cover and refrigerate overnight.
- Meanwhile, make the meat: Toss the lamb in a bowl with the sugar, oregano, cinnamon, nutmeg, ground cloves, cayenne, 1 tablespoon each olive oil and salt, and 1 teaspoon black pepper. Heat 1 tablespoon olive oil in a large Dutch oven over medium-high heat. Working in batches, cook the lamb until browned, about 3 minutes per side; transfer to a plate. Add the pancetta to the pot; cook, stirring, until the fat renders, about 2 minutes. Add the onion and garlic and cook, stirring, until lightly golden, about 4 minutes. Add the tomatoes, wine, tomato paste, porcinis and orange zest, then return the lamb to the pot. Cut out a round of parchment paper and put directly on the surface of the meat. Bring to a simmer over medium heat, then reduce the heat to low, cover with the lid and cook until the lamb is tender, about 2 hours. (Adjust the heat as needed to maintain a gentle simmer.) Transfer the mixture to a large bowl and let cool to room temperature; cover and refrigerate overnight.
- Skim off any fat from the bean and lamb mixtures. Remove the sausage and garlic heads from the beans. Slice the sausage into pieces and squeeze the garlic cloves from their skins; set aside. Discard the herb sachet, carrots, celery and onion halves from the beans. Discard the orange zest from the lamb.
- Using a slotted spoon, transfer about half of the beans to a large Dutch oven and top with the lamb (just the beans and lamb, not the liquid). Add the sliced sausage and garlic cloves, then the remaining beans. Pour in all the liquid from the lamb mixture. Add enough of the bean cooking liquid to cover, if necessary.
- Put the Dutch oven over medium-low heat and bring the mixture to a simmer, uncovered, about 40 minutes. Preheat the oven to 325 degrees F. Pulse the bread in a food processor to make coarse crumbs. Toss with the remaining 1 tablespoon olive oil. Sprinkle on the cassoulet, transfer to the oven and bake until golden brown, about 1 hour, 30 minutes. Let rest 15 minutes before serving.
Reviews
Wow, this dish sings with flavor. It’s not all that time consuming, took about 1-1.5 hours to get everything to simmering day 1 and then day 2 was a breeze. After reading a number of cassoulet recipes, I decided to do a long slow roast in the oven on day 2. I brought it up to a simmer on the stovetop, then put it in the oven at 250 for about 4 hours, breaking the crust and pushing it in to the cassoulet every hour or so.
Oh this was very tasty. It makes quite a bit and needs to be made the previous day but it was definitely worth the effort and wait. We’ll be making this again for sure. The flavors are incredible.
We just finished eating this (well, part of it. It’s a big recipe!). The verdict in the house is it’s delicious! The flavors are complex and exotic, but not difficult to achieve. While it’s true this isn’t a quick recipe, it isn’t a hard one, either. It’s pretty much 1: do a few minutes of stuff, then 2: wait a while. I like that the final cooking happens on a second day. The amount of time required to prepare the two components (the beans and the meat) make it a great recipe to build on a weekend. I could see doing this first part on a Sunday afternoon, then tossing it all together and popping in in the over after work on Monday. I’ll be making this recipe again, and my family will cheer.
Amazing. It takes time, but so worth it.
This is an extremely time consuming dish. While no great skills are required, it takes several hours over two days.
Some might wonder if all the flavors are too busy. The whole is more than the sum of it’s parts. The result is a very complex flavor in which you can’t really detect any single component.
At the final step Be liberal with the bean juice. Fill to just below the level of the top layer of beans. It will lose liquid in the final simmering and oven time.
The final result. It was good. The flavors were complex and the breadcrumbs enhanced the dish. I felt the Italian sausages a bit out of place and might enjoy it more with a different type of sausage. I have very little access to sausages where I live so used Italian. I also went with pork instead of lamb and it was an excellent substitute. So I enjoyed the dish a lot. But I think the other important question with a dish like this is whether it was worth the time and effort. I didn’t think so.
Not sure what the other reviewer did, but my experience was very different. This recipe is not the prettiest girl at the dance–comfort food seldom is–but it’s bursting with flavor. The long, slow treatments of the lamb (searing and braising and roasting make it unbelievably tender, and the sausage retains its integrity to give a counterpoint protein texture. I used dried canellini beans to be consistent with the classic cassoulet recipe. The cayenne and black pepper give just enough of a kick to keep things interesting on the palate, but not so much as to overwhelm the flavors of the bouquet garni herbs.I don’t think it needs as much breadcrumbs on the top as the recipe requires, but I don’t eat a lot of bread anyway and it’s a matter of taste. From my results, this recipe would keep people coming back for more with a flavorful, rich, stick-to-your-ribs comfort food and is just as comfortable with an amber ale as a glass of Merlot.
The flavors seemed like a crap shoot to me but I decided to try it anyway. Not good. I don’t mind tackling a complicated recipe because cooking relaxes me but if I am going to devote that much time and effort to a recipe it better be something special. Simply not the case with this one. If you feel like rolling the dice, knock yourself out but I don’t recommend it. Nobody that ate it would finish it, seconds went in the trash.