Most of the recipes on this site are ones that I’ve been making for years and where I don’t really have a recipe written down – it is all in my head. Most of the recipes are very flexible and can take more or less or an ingredient or two. That’s what makes them easy to adjust and make your own. This recipe, is not one I’ve made up myself. It is adjusted from one I found online. The original recipe calls for 0.5 cup pinto beans. My local super market doesn’t sell pinto beans, and 0.5 a cup is just under half a tin of most beans. So, I adjusted this to work with a tin of beans. It can take any beans, pretty much, but red kidney beans are both easy to find and to work with.

Sausages are great with mash, or potatoes boulangere, or in a roll with hot sauce. Because they are made with gluten and beans, they have a high protein content and are really quite filling.

I’ve marked these as advanced for a number of reasons:

• They contain two ingredients that aren’t always easy to find: nutritional yeast and gluten flour. Both can be bought at Real Foods on Broughton Street in Edinburgh, or online.
• They need to be steamed, which means they need special equipment.
• They are best when they’ve been allowed to rest for 24 hours and are re-heated. (Although they can be eaten directly.)

Despite all of that, they’re not difficult to make.

They freeze well. When re-heating from frozen, de-frost in a microwave oven, and then fry. If re-heating in the oven, cover in foil or they’ll be bread-like and chewy on the outside.

Serves: 5 (1 serving is two sausages). Prep: 10 minutes. Cooking time: 40 minutes.
Stores: In the fridge, 3-4 days. In the freezer, up to 3 months.

Tools

• Chopping board
• Knife
• Large bowl
• Tin opener
• Potato masher (or fork)
• Measuring jug
• Cup measure, or cup
• Half-cup measure, or cup
• Quarter-cup measure, or cup
• Pestle and mortar
• Teaspoon measure, or teaspoon
• 2-tiered steamer
• Aluminium foil
• Frying pan

Ingredients

• 1 tin red kidney beans, drained
• 1.25 cup gluten flour
• 0.25 cup nutritional yeast
• 1.5 crushed fennel seeds
• 1 teaspoon red pepper flakes
• 1 teaspoon paprika powder
• 1 teaspoon dried oregano
• 1 cup cold vegetable stock (dissolve half a stock cube, or a teaspoon of powder stock with a small amount of hot water, then make up the rest with cold water. Cold water doesn’t dissolve stock very well, and hot water reacts really quickly with gluten, so a little messing about is necessary.)
• 1 tablespoon olive oil
• 2 tablespoon soya sauce

Method

1. First, ready the steaming apparatus: boil water, prepare 10 pieces of aluminium foil. The mixture comes together quickly, so you want this ready to go.
2. Put the drained beans in the bowl and mash thoroughly with the masher or a fork. It’s OK to have some fairly rough bits, but there should be no whole beans left.
3. Make up the wet ingredients in the measuring jug: stock, oil and soya sauce. Leave it there as you move to the next step.
4. Add the dry ingredients to the beans, starting with the spices and the yeast, working them in, then adding the gluten. The gluten will start reacting with the moisture in the beans, mix quickly until you have a a roughly lumpy mixture.
5. Add the water and stir quickly. Work with a hand for a minutes or so to make sure it’s well mixed.
6. Divide into ten pieces (two halves then each into five).
7. Put a piece of dough onto a piece of aluminium foil, shape into a sausage shape, roll the foil up and twist the ends to form a closed cigar shape.
8. Put the sausages in the steamer, five in each layer, put a lid on and leave for 40 minutes.
9. Remove from the steam (careful!), unroll (it’s hot!) and let cool, or, if using directly, fry in a pan to get a nice frying surface.

Variations

• Swap the chillies for chipotl, and the paprika for smoked paprika, for a smoky sausage.
• Use a different type of bean. Butter beans, fresh dill, the zest of an orange and fewer of the spices is a nice variation.
• Turn them into meatballs, don’t cover in foil, but do still steam. Makes 40.