Favas com Chouriço (Broad Beans Stewed with Chouriço)
- Prep
- 20 min
- Total
- 1 h
- Servings
- 4
- Calories
- 490 kcal
In spring, the markets fill with broad bean pods. Favas com chouriço divides opinion, but for those who love it, it’s the taste of the new garden in a pot.
It’s a humble, rural dish, above all from the Ribatejo and the Alentejo. Broad beans fed many families in spring, and the sausages from the pig slaughter gave them flavor. Today it’s a main course from north to south.
Recipe
Favas com Chouriço
Spring broad beans cooked with chouriço, blood sausage and pork ribs, with cilantro and mint. A seasonal, comforting Portuguese dish.
Ingredients
Method
- 1In a medium pot, put the olive oil, onion and chopped garlic. Cook over low heat until the onion turns golden without burning.
- 2Add the pieces of ribs or pork belly and fry until they take on some color and release their fat.
- 3Add the chouriço (keep the morcela for later so it doesn't fall apart) and let it stew for 3 or 4 minutes.
- 4Pour in the white wine, season with paprika and let the alcohol cook off.
- 5Add the broad beans. Add half the bunch of cilantro whole (you can tie it with string to take it out later), and season with salt (a little, because of the sausages) and pepper.
- 6Toss the beans well in the onions and meat. Add half a cup of warm water (the beans release plenty of water and should cook more in steam than submerged).
- 7Cover the pot tightly and stew over low heat for 25 to 30 minutes. Shake the pot by its handles now and then, rather than stirring with a spoon, so you don't crush the beans.
- 8Ten minutes before the end, lay the morcela rounds on top of the beans so they cook just in the steam, and add the mint if using.
- 9Check the beans are cooked (they should be soft, with their skins intact).
- 10Take off the heat, discard the cooked bunch of cilantro and sprinkle generously with the rest of the cilantro, finely chopped, before serving.
Tips
Cook the beans slowly so they stew in their own steam and in the juices the sausages release. Add salt only at the end: the sausages are already salty.
Fresh beans should have a green “eye”; if it has turned black, the bean is more mature and floury.
For a lighter version, leave out the pork belly or use lean bacon.
