Dashi Beans with Sausage
This basic Dashi recipe is great as a base for tons of recipes, like soups, stews and rice.
Ingredients
Dashi
- 2 6" x 4" pieces kombu
- 3 cups Bonito Flakes
Beans and Assembly
- 10 cups Dashi
- 2 cups Water, preferably filtered
- 2 cups Dried Great Northern Beans rinsed
- 2 tbsp Olive Oil
- 1 Onion, quartered
- 1 head Garlic cut in half
- 1 3" knob Ginger peeled
- 2 bay leaves
- 2 carrots medium in size, 6-8"
- 10 ounces Frozen Peas
- 1 package Niman Ranch Fully-Cooked Giner Lemongrass Sausage sliced into thin rounds - you can use any sausage!
- 1/4 cup Soy Sauce
- Salt and Pepper
- 1 handfull Fresh Dill
- 4 slices Toasted Bread (optional)
Instructions
Dashi
- Add Kombu to large pot and cover with 10 cups of water. Soak for 30 minutes and then bring water to a boil. Remove and discard the Kombu.
- Add bonito flakes to the water, submerge and lower the heat to a very gentle boil. Simmer bonito flakes for 10 minutes, remove from heat and let stand for 15 minutes.
- Strain Dashi through a mesh sieve into a large bowl. Discard bonito flakes and set bowl with dashi aside until ready to add to the beans.
Beans and Assembly
- Wipe out pot used to prepare dashi, add olive oil to pot and heat over medium. Add quartered onion, halved head of garlic, ginger, carrots and bay leaves to pot and season very generously with salt and a few cracks of black pepper.
- Cook, stirring occasionally, until everything begins to brown and soften - about 10 minutes.
- Add beans, reserved dashi and two cups of water to the pot and season again with salt and pepper. Bring everything to a boil and then reduce the heat to a simmer. Allow to simmer for 2-2.5 hours, adding water by the half cup as needed, stirring occasionally and salting as needed (every 30 minutes) until the beans are soft and cooked through and mixture is stew-like.
- Add in peas, sliced sausage and soy sauce. Cover pot and cook until peas and sausage are up to temperature - 5-7 minutes. If you're serving the beans with bread, this is the time to slather your toast in ghee or grass fed butter and toast.
- Serve beans over toast in a bowl and top with fresh dill.
