Slow Cooker Quorn Sausage Casserole

Hello all

It's been a while I know - sorry about that, we have had a lot going on - not least of all organising and preparing to emigrate in March next year and lots of things associated with that. 

Anyway, I have a number of recipes ready to go on here and now I just need to get round to posting them. Those that I post now will be my own take on various recipes, usually using quorn or other veggie products. I love to create veggie versions of traditional dishes and proving that they can be equally tasty and I promise I will get back on the horse and start posting again!

So, as the days are getting shorter and the nights are closing in I have been using my slow cooker - A LOT!! I love being able to bang stuff in there in a morning, leave for work and come home to a fantastic, aromatic dish all ready to serve. I use my slow cooker for meat stews quite often and decided to wing it with a quorn sausage casserole, it turned out brilliantly and therefore I share it with you here.

The beauty of this recipe is also that you can ad-lib with whatever you have to hand, I used mushrooms, sweet potato, onions and some borlotti beans but you can use whatever veg and/or pulses you have to hand to bulk it out. This is a wonderfully hearty dish and makes 4 large, filling portions.

I used a packet sausage casserole mix but completely ignored all the instructions etc and just used it as a shortcut to a casserole base. You could also stick this all in a standard casserole dish for around 60 mins on about 180 degrees (for a fan oven) and achieve the same result.

Here goes:

In your slow cooker place two chopped onions, your quorn sausages, whatever veg you fancy (I used mushrooms and a large sweet potato), a tin of beans/chick peas (I used borlotti) and a tin of chopped tomatoes.

Fill the empty tomato tin with boiled water out the kettle and then stir the sausage casserole mix into this and sling it in the slow cooker, half fill the tin again and chuck that in too.

Add either a stock cube or stock pot in and stir everything together thoroughly (I used a knorr veg stock pot).

Switch the slow cooker to low for 8 hours or high for 4 hours and leave.

About an hour before you want to eat your casserole you can add some veggie dumplings by mixing 50g atora veg suet with 100g self raising flour and binding with 5-6 tbsp of cold water. Make a soft dough and split into 8 pieces then roll each piece into a ball and sit on top of your casserole. My husband is always starving (he runs a lot) and hence you will notice from the photo below that there are more than 8 dumplings - I do one and a half times the dumpling recipe to make it 3 dumplings per portion and try to fill his hollow legs. The propoints values below are based on this so if you only make 8 dumplings you can knock a point or 2 off the total (I haven't calculated it so this is a guesstimate).

Casserole with dumplings in towards the end of cooking (I promise that is not a deliberate placement of the Quorn cookbook, that's just where it lives!).

A hearty portion of casserole.

And there you have it! No added fat in this dish at all (aside from the suet in the dumplings) and it tastes amazing! I serve it either on its own as it is incredibly filling but my other half mops up the tasty juice with crusty bread. This recipe makes 4 substantial portions.

On it's own the weight watchers propoints value of each portion of this casserole is 14 (so a sufficient meal anyway!) broken down as follows: quorn sausages (4), beans (2), sweet potato (2), suet (2), flour (2), stock pot (1), casserole mix (1).

Quorn Thai Noodles

70/70


Well, this is the end of an era for me - the final recipe from the Quorn book and the end of this project (but not the end of the blog, worry not!).


It has taken me a while to do these last few because they were all salad-esque recipes and in the UK our summer has taken forever to arrive this year. However, this last few days have been glorious and this week I finally made Quorn Thai Noodles which is a light meal, perfect for warm weather.


There is no online recipe for this at the Quorn site but it is a very simple one and I will detail it here.


Basically you use quorn fillets for this and all you need to do with them is defrost them and saute them until browned and cooked through, then slice them diagonally into large chunks and put to one side. Your dressing is made by mixing the juice and zest of one lime, 2 teaspoons of soy sauce, 2 teaspoons of sweet chilli sauce, two chopped garlic cloves and a tblsp of oil (I used peanut). Tip this dressing over the chopped quorn chunks and leave to marinade for as long as you like.


The key with this recipe is to prep everything so it is to hand, this way it is very quick to cook, so chop one carrot and one pepper into thin slices, one small bunch of fresh coriander roughly and 4 spring onions finely. Cook 60g fine rice noodles and then drain and put to one side along with a good handful of bean sprouts. Now you are ready to assemble the dish! 


In a wok heat a tblsp of oil and fry off the noodles and chopped veg/beansprouts for a few minutes before throwing in the quorn pieces and marinade plus the spring onions and coriander, this is what it looks like while cooking:

You then literally warm it through and its done. The book advises to serve this at room temperature but I served it straight from the wok, here it is served:

Presentation wise I wish I had used a red pepper instead of an orange one as the overall look is quite orange and the contrast would be better but taste wise this was very nice indeed.


We did find it quite dry as there is very little marinade as you can probably see, the strongest flavours were the lime juice and the coriander but that did mean that the dish tasted quintessentially Thai.


This is quite a nice light supper dish and I probably would make it again, I would be tempted to beef up the marinade with more sweet chilli and soy sauces next time but it would be very easy to tweak.


In terms of propoints, although the recipe states this makes 4 portions, I made it make 3 as we had it for a main meal rather than as a lunch or light portion, based on it serving three therefore each portion works out at 7 points which is a bit of a bargain! It breaks down like this quorn (2), noodles (3), oil (2).


I quite liked this recipe and will do something similar in the future I am sure. I would give this a 7/10.


And that, folks, is all of the recipes from the Quorn book done!


I will blog soon with a round up of the experiment and my intention is to carry this blog on with more recipes (quorn and other) proving that veggie food can be fab!


Thanks for sharing this journey with me! x

Quorn Beef Empanadas

69/70

Ok, so Beef Empanadas then - I cannot find an online version of this recipe so will be explaining it with a bit more detail than normal. I knew this might not be one of our favourites as we are not too keen on shortcrust pastry in our household and that is probably why it got left so close to the end.

In terms of how they looked I was pretty impressed, this is the picture of the filling when ready to use:

And this is the finished empanadas:

Now, I must admit I cheated and bought ready-made pastry because I just did not fancy the hassle of making my own for a recipe I was not that keen on. It also made the whole thing a lot quicker and easier. The recipe calls for eight 6" circles of pastry to be cut out ready to make the pasty like empanadas.

Basically the filling is fried off steak strips, garlic, onion and peppers with some red wine, chilli and paprika. Quite a tasty filling. You then spoon a small amount into the centre of each circle of pastry, top with a small amount of grated cheese (the recipe asks for emmental but I used mature cheddar) and fold the pastry over into a semi circle before sealing and glazing with egg wash.

The empanadas take 20-25 minutes to bake in the oven and then they are ready to serve. I served them with potato wedges and it all looked a bit beige as you can see!

This recipe is labelled as a light bites/snack so I guess the implication is you would only eat one. I had one and found it quite substantial anyway due to the heaviness of the pastry. I would certainly not want to eat two. I also found it overwhelmingly salty - but I think this may be my use of mature cheddar instead of emmental cheese. I did not overly enjoy it to be honest.

And then there is the propoints. Of course the minute you wrap something in pastry the values shoot through the roof. Each empanada will cost you 11 propoints! This is because the pastry alone is 8 - the breakdown is as follows: pastry (8), quorn (1), cheese (1), oil (1). This is based on around a tbslp of oil to saute everything in and a very small amount of cheese in each empanada.

So pretty high values for a dish I was not overly keen on - but if you like pastry and these kinds of foods then it might be your bag! Personally I gave it a 5/10 and I don't think I would make it again but it is a new way to use quorn so fairplay to them for that.

Spicy Coconut & Quorn Noodle Soup

68/70

Over the Easter weekend I did two of the final three recipes in the book, this is one of them: Spicy Coconut Noodle Soup.

It is another Thai inspired soup, using curry paste and coconut milk as the base but it is surprisingly quick and easy to sling together and quite tasty and filling too. I had no shitake mushrooms and used chestnut instead of button for the fresh but it was fine.

Here are some pictures of the dish served:

Please note that the recipe in the link above is double the quantities of that in the book - my version served 4 good portions and was half of all the quantities of ingredients.

Very easy to make, first you set the dried mushrooms to soak (I had picked up a big bag of mixed dried Asian mushrooms from Aldi the other week for a quid so this was great timing!). Then you literally fry off the paste in a big pan, add the coconut milk, water from the mushrooms and quorn pieces and simmer for five minutes then add all the other ingredients in two batches (mushrooms then everything else) simmer for another few minutes and Bob's your uncle!

As it contains noodles this is quite a filling soup and would actually make a great light meal on its own. I did find it rather hard to serve because the soup base itself is very watery but the noodles mean it drips a lot and hangs in clumps - the easiest way to get it from pan to bowl was with a spaghetti server and then a ladle!

Based on this serving 4, each portion totalled 10 propoints which seems quite high but then the noodles, coconut milk and paste all have values which needed adding in, this is broken down as follows: noodles (5), quorn (1), light coconut milk (3), paste (1).

I did find this quite tasty but I am not sure I would make it again in a hurry as it sits uneasily between a full meal and a soup to me and also it is SO hard to serve without making a mess! Nevertheless we gave this a 7/10.

Hoisin Quorn Fillets with Zesty Rice Salad

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Wow, this one was a real winner in our house! A hoisin quorn fillet rice salad with a zesty dressing. Filling, fairly healthy and pretty easy to throw together - although I have to say that (as usual) I tweaked it around our tastes and what I had in the house.


I cannot find an online version of this recipe at the moment so no link I'm afraid, but I will walk you through it. Firstly the fillets were marinaded in Hoisin sauce (just a shop bought jar). Now the recipe said to mix 3 tbslp with 1 tbslp of oil but I couldn't see the point of adding oil here so I simply used the sauce - and I didn't measure it either, I just slathered most of the jar over the fillets (which I had left to defrost in the fridge overnight first).


I left the fillets in the sauce for a good few hours to marinade and meanwhile made the dressing for the rice. This consisted of a clove of garlic, chopped (I used 2), 3 tblsp of fresh orange juice, zest of two oranges and 3 tblsp of olive oil. This ready to pour into the rice I chopped all the veg.


Two peppers and a courgette were chopped into batons and the recipe called for a cucumber too but we do not like cucumber so I ignored this. I also chopped a handful of fresh parsley and a handful of fresh mint and put them to one side. Doing all this prep means that the dish itself is speedy to prepare.


Next I cooked the rice (200g - I used basmati) and then once it had cooled a little I stirred the dressing into it and left it for 10 minutes to marinade. Next you mix together all the raw veg and the herbs into the rice (the recipe also includes 2 segmented oranges but I left these out too as I can't have too much citrus due to migraines). This is what the rice salad section looked like when it was ready:

Next the fillets were put under the grill for about 6 minutes on each side, until I could be sure they were cooked through. I then served the fillets and the rice on top of a bed of salad leaves.

We both really enjoyed this meal and I thought it looked pretty appetizing too! The dressing through the rice was lovely and the flavours really worked well together, the sauce on the fillets had baked on and this was a nice touch, I will definitely use that method with cooking fillets again in the future.


In terms of weight watchers points each portion works out at 12 (based on the recipe serving 3 with 2 fillets each). This is broken down as follows: rice (6), quorn fillets (3), oil (2), hoi sin sauce (1). Considering this is a pretty filling and incredibly tasty meal I think this is pretty good. 


I would definitely make this again and it is a great recipe to tweak to your own tastes too, top marks Quorn - I wish I had made this one earlier! We give this an 8/10.

Quorn Thai Salad

66/70

I can almost see the finish line with this project! Only four more recipes to go!

Anyway, as the weather in the UK is akin to mid-summer at the moment (despite it being March) it was lovely to do another of the salads from the book.

This is a Thai salad and it does indeed involve many Thai flavours, it is also quite a filling salad as it is full of raw veg as well as the quorn pieces. It is easy to make and the dressing is lovely and light, as you will see below it also ticks all the boxes in terms of how healthy it is so a winner all round!

First things first, you need to marinade the pieces in green thai curry paste, I used a couple of tablespoons because we like it spicy. I left it for around an hour before doing everything else. The salad consists of shredded white cabbage, a sliced pepper, diced mango, blanched green beans and a couple of chopped tomatoes.  The marinaded quorn pieces are then cooked off until the marinade has browned and the pieces are cooked through.

The dressing is simply garlic, ginger, soy sauce, lime juice and zest and a small amount of oil. This is why the salad is so zingy, the combination of lime, soy, ginger, garlic and the final coriander garnish is very Thai tasting and delicious. The veg and quorn mix, along with the dressing are then tossed with salad leaves to create the final salad dish.

It is also a very colourful salad, as you can see here:

I thoroughly enjoyed this salad (which is quite something as it is not a style of dish I particularly like). The mix of textures and the vivid flavours made it very enjoyable and I will definitely be making this one again - fantastic on a warm day.

In terms of weight watchers points, only the quorn, paste and oil in the dressing carries any points and therefore, based on this serving four, each portion is only 4 points as follows: quorn (2), oil (1), curry paste (1). An absolute bargain in terms of daily points!

We would give this salad an 8/10 and I think it is my favourite salad to date from the book.

Quorn Steak & Red Pepper Broth

65/70

Another soup from the book (only one more soup to do after this one!) and this is definitely more of a hearty broth. As this one contains noodles and is almost a main meal in itself I really quite enjoyed it - it reminded me of the ramen style dishes you can get in Wagamama.

Very quick and easy to make, the base of this is chopped ginger and garlic simmered in hot vegetable stock for 5 minutes. Before I set to creating the stock base I marinaded the steak strips in Chinese 5 spice powder and some szechuan sauce. The recipe calls for only a tablespoon of the sauce but I whacked in a full 'Blue Dragon' sachet and personally I liked the heat this gave to the soup.

Once your stock is simmered you drop in the marinaded pieces, chopped pepper (I used frozen) and chopped pak choi and cook for a few more minutes to heat through, then add in the noodles (cooked and refreshed in cold water) and heat the whole thing through, garnish with spring onions and fresh parsley and serve.

This is what it looks like served:

Because of the noodles this feels like less of a soup and more of a main meal and we really enjoyed it. I think for us it would have been a bit bland if I had not bumped up the amount of szechuan sauce in the dish but obviously you can tweak this to suit your own tastes. The ginger and garlic and also the 5 spice come through really nicely and make for a very aromatic dish. 

As the ginger and garlic are simply cooked off in the stock there is no fat in this recipe at all which is a real bonus. In terms of weight watchers points, using the recommended 50g egg noodles per person, each portion works out at only 6 points as follows: noodles (4) and steak strips (2). Everything else in this recipe is zero points!


I would personally make this again, the dish had a real vibrancy to it and the flavours were very distinct, it also has the added benefit of being healthy whilst also filling, we would give this an 8/10 and it is probably my favourite soup by a long chalk from the Quorn book.