A watercolour of browned frankfurter pieces among pale white beans in a red sauce
Generated with OpenAI gpt-image-1
Adapted from Saucisse-haricots

Frankfurters with white beans

An established dish converted to shelf-stable ingredients. Every substitution is documented below.

How long it keeps

About 6 months, set by Vegetable oil (sunflower or rapeseed).

Indicative, for planning a build before you buy. The answer for a pack you already own is the best before date printed on it, and that only holds if it has been stored as the label says.

Serves
3
Burners
1
Pans
1
Water
0.2 L
Active
10 min
Total
20 min

Ingredients

Twenty minutes, one pan, and considerably better than the sum of two tins.

The frankfurters are already cooked, so the only decision worth making is whether to brown them. Brown them. Straight from the tin they are pallid and slippery; three minutes in hot fat and they blister, split slightly and taste of something.

  1. Drain the frankfurters and dry them. Cut into thick diagonal pieces, more cut surface to catch.
  2. Hot pan, oil, frankfurters in one layer. Three minutes without moving them, then turn. Lift out.
  3. Dried onion into the same fat for two or three minutes, then garlic and paprika for twenty seconds. Tomato purée in and fried for a full minute, frying the purée rather than stirring it in is the difference between it tasting raw and tasting cooked.
  4. Beans in with about half their liquid, plus a splash of water. Simmer ten minutes, crushing a few against the pan to thicken it.
  5. Frankfurters back in to warm through. Vinegar off the heat.

Serves 3. Good with flatbread, and better the moment it comes off the heat than after standing.

What this was adapted from

Saucisse-haricots: the French bistro plate of sausage and white beans, and its German Wurst und Bohnen cousin

  • fresh Toulouse or Montbéliard sausage → tinned frankfurters

    The original needs a raw sausage browned and simmered for an hour. Tinned frankfurters are already cooked and only need heating, which turns a long braise into a fifteen-minute pan: a different dish honestly, not a pretence at the same one.

  • a long-simmered bean and stock base → tinned cannellini with smoked paprika

    Dried beans and a stock built from scratch are hours and litres of water. Smoked paprika supplies the smoke that a bacon bone would have, in a dish that is now quick rather than slow.