Stewed Okra And Tomatoes With Sausage Recipe

By the middle of the week, most of us don't want to even think about making a piece of toast, let alone plan an interesting meal for the whole family. And that's perfectly understandable. But before you take a deep breath and steel yourself up to rattle every pot and pan in your kitchen, recipe developer Kristen Carli has a simple but savory sausage dish packed with stewed tomatoes and okra that's sure to please everyone in your household. 

"This would make an ideal weeknight meal for the family," she says. "It's made in only one pan, so it makes for easy cleanup."

The beauty of this dish is that it looks like you toiled in the kitchen for hours when it only takes a few minutes (and not much effort) to throw together. And for anyone who is new to cooking and a little nervous about working with pork products, this meal is foolproof.

To make your stewed okra and tomatoes with sausage, you'll need sliced andouille sausages, frozen chopped okra, minced garlic, fire-roasted tomatoes, Creole seasoning, cayenne pepper, dried oregano, and paprika. You can use either olive oil or canola oil for this recipe, but Carli chose to use olive oil. The choice is up to you!

And remember, you may want to keep more than one type of olive oil in your pantry.

To start your recipe, add your olive oil (or whatever oil you're using) to a large skillet, and put it over medium heat. Before cooking your Andouille sausage, you'll need to cut up the links into bite-sized slices (as pictured). For consistency of taste, try to keep the slices basically uniform in size. Once you've sliced up the sausage links, place them in your large skillet and cook for five minutes before removing them from the pan. Set them aside for now to make room for your okra.

Carli says she specifically chose Andouille sausage "to keep with the Creole/Cajun flavors" of this dish.

Once you've removed your slices of Andouille sausage from the pan, add your frozen okra to the same pan and cook for 20 minutes. And don't worry about chopping because frozen okra is available pre-cut.

Although this recipe calls for frozen okra, you can use fresh okra, but Carli cautions "it may be a bit tricky to find."  

"If you do use fresh, you can cut the initial sauté time down to 10 to 12 minutes, as it will not need time to defrost." Also, keep in mind that you'll need to factor in time to cut up fresh okra.

And here's where things get a bit spicy. Once you finish initially cooking the okra, add back in the Andouille sausage slices as well as the garlic, the tomatoes, the Creole seasoning, the cayenne pepper, the oregano, and the paprika.

In case you're wondering why Carli used fire-roasted tomatoes, she says they are crucial to the recipe to "bring the extra heat." Just keep in mind that you can make adjustments depending on just how hot you want your stewed okra and tomatoes with sausage. For example, you may want to use only a quarter teaspoon of cayenne pepper if you're not the kind of person who likes a lot of heat.

Now that you've assembled all of your ingredients in the skillet, it's time to fully cook your stewed okra and tomatoes with sausage. Cover your skillet with a lid and cook everything for 20 more minutes. One quick warning about okra: As Carli points out, it can get slimy when it is cooked. This is why cooking it for an additional 20 minutes is so important. "The 20 minutes where it is in the pan cooking is ideal to cook off the slimy texture," Carli explains.

And one more thing to keep in mind: You're family will be wandering into your kitchen long before the 20 minutes are up just because of the aromas from this savory dish.

At the beginning of this recipe, we mentioned that Carli's recipe for stewed okra and tomatoes with sausage is foolproof even if you're new to preparing pork products and are nervous about food poisoning. The true secret to why this is the case (and arguably the secret ingredient in this dish) is the sausage she chose. 

"I buy Andouille sausage, which is fully cooked, so there's less of a risk if it is not cooked long enough," she explains. "The initial cook time in the pan is to brown the edges to get them a bit crispy."