When life gives you sausages...

'When life gives you lemons, make lemonade', goes the ancient proverb (which isn't actually all that ancient).

But what if you've just conducted a mammothian sausage taste test and your lemonless life has actually given you a fridge full of sausages?

You make a delicious sausage casserole, that's what. Here's the recipe. It's piss-easy.

Farmhouse sausage casserole

Ingredients - serves 3-4:

I didn't get bored of eating sausages every day

Pork sausages, good quality, 10-12
Onions, 2-3, coarsely chopped
Carrots, 4-5, chopped into bitesize chunks
Celery, 4-5 stalks, again, bitesize chunks
Tomatoes, 3-4, quartered/sixthed

Porter or similar dark beer, a pint
Worcestershire Sauce
English Mustard
Garlic Salt
Black Pepper
Sage
Chilli powder

Oil for cooking


Method:

The first thing to stress is that it's important to use good quality sausages with a high meat content. Usually cheap cuts of meat are good for slow cooking, but cheap sausages full of rusk will just absorb all the liquid and fall apart, so go for sausages with a 90% meat content or higher.

Fry your sausages and onions until they're about 70% cooked, then transfer them to a large casserole, along with the uncooked celery, carrots and tomatoes.

Deglaze the pan with about half the beer, and add the Worcestershire Sauce, Mustard and everything else, making sure any little mustardy clusters are dissolved in the liquid. I like to be gung-ho with pepper and chilli powder, but you can show restraint if you like your flavours a little more subdued.

Pour it all over the sausages and vegetables, and then add the other half of the beer - it doesn't matter if it's not completely covered with liquid at this stage because the vegetables will excrete fluids naturally.

Pop the lid on and whack in an oven at about 150 for at least two hours, ideally three or more.

I like to serve it with a nice creamy, buttery mash and a pint of porter, but the choice is entirely yours.

Enjoy!