Cooking on Wood: Vegan Sausage Casserole

On one chilly February day, we fancied a good hearty casserole, one that warms you up all lovely from the inside and makes you want to wrap yourself into a blanket and watch dancing fires in your wood burner or firepit for the rest of the day. We cooked a beautiful vegan sausage casserole in a Hungarian style kotlich with the help of our British kiln dried logs and KindleFlamers and loved every mouthful of it. This recipe will serve eight people so go on, invite some friends over for an outdoor cooking experience.

Vegan sausage casserole

Serves 8

Cooking time: 1 hour + prep

What you will need:

2 tbsp olive oil

1 large white onion, finely chopped

1 pack of meat-free sausages of your choice

2 x 400g tins of cannellini beans

2 x 400g of chopped tomatoes

1 vegetable stock cube

1 litre of water

1 tsp smoked paprika

1 tsp dried rosemary

Salt and pepper to taste

Flour for thickening

A kotlich

Kiln dried logs & a firelighter- we recommend our Flaming Firewood & a KindleFlamer

Step 1:

Prepare all your ingredients as well as your cooking appliances. You will need a kotlich, British kiln dried logs (we recommend Flaming Firewood as logs are smaller and of different shapes and sizes, therefore quicker to get a good fire and easier to control the heat output) and a KindleFlamer natural firelighter – you will only need one to start a fire and no kindling.

Step 2:

Start getting the ingredients for your casserole ready. Set up your kotlich above your firepit and light the fire.

Ingredients for a vegan casserole cooked on wood fire

Kiln dried logs fire fueling a kotlich Firepit

Light a fire with Ready to Burn logs and eco Flamers natural firelighters

Step 3:

Chop up the onion and the sausages. Pour the oil into the kotlich and let the fire warm it up. Add your onions and cook until golden (you will hear the onions sizzling beautifully with the heat of the fire). Mix occasionally to stop the onion from sticking to the bottom of the kotlich.

Cooking on Wood vegan sausages over fire

Chopping onions for a casserole cooking over wood

Step 4:

Add your chopped sausages and cook until browned. Add beans and crumble in the stock cube. Mix and cook everything for a few minutes, then add the chopped tomatoes and about 1 litre of boiling water to dilute the casserole. Add the smoked paprika, rosemary, salt and pepper and cover with a lid. Mix occasionally and make sure you keep feeding the fire with enough logs to keep the heat on.

Pouring chopped tomatoes into wood fire cooked sausage casserole

Vegan sausages and beans casserole cooked on wood

Herbs and spices to season the vegan sausage casserole

Step 5:

Mix up three teaspoons of flour and some water in a bowl (you don’t add it directly into the casserole to avoid lumps of flour). Once you have a runny paste, pour that into your casserole to thicken it up. Leave to cook for another 5-10 minutes. The sauce should now be nice and thick, as per image below.