Food

Sausage Skillet Bake: A Fall Recipe Makeover

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This week in North Carolina, the weather has finally gotten cooler and it feels like fall! We are starting to get into some of our favorite fall traditions: going to the North Carolina State Fair, making Halloween costumes, and cooking fall-weather dishes. While this weather certainly makes me crave mugs of hot beverages and cinnamon-spiced treats, I also want to just turn on the oven and make some comfort food. This Sausage Skillet Bake is just that for our family.

Most of the recipe ingredients are healthy and easy to find.

This recipe is actually twice made over from the original.

I first discovered the recipe while watching an episode of Martha Stewart Living. I had just graduated from law school and was studying for the bar exam. At lunch, I would sometimes turn on the show just to take a break from all the legal concepts I was cramming that summer. One episode featured ideas for new moms, including a version of this recipe that had a biscuit topping and a gravy thickened with flour. It sounded so good, so I printed it off and set it aside for when I was done studying and had time to make more complicated meals.

Sauteing the veggies and the meat.

Fast forward a couple of months and my husband was diagnosed with Celiac disease. Back then, the condition was relatively rare and we were overwhelmed by how few foods we felt he could eat. After I got over the shock, I decided that there had to be a way to make recipes that were safe for him, and I began converting gluten-filled recipes to gluten-free ones. This recipe was one of the first I converted. To make it gluten-free, I made some simple changes. I replaced the cheesy biscuit topping with a cheese mashed potato topping, similar to a Shepherd’s pie. Rather than a fat and flour roux to create a gravy, I made a thickening slurry using gluten-free chicken broth and corn starch. And with that, Sausage Skillet Bake was born and my work was done . . .

Action shot of dolloping on spoonfuls of mashed potato topping.

That is, it was done until gluten-free was not good enough to deal with my own health conditions. After my daughter was born, I started experiencing migraine headaches. Over the next several years, they became more frequent. At the end of 2017, I also started experiencing this bizarre neuropathy or nerve pain that I talked about in a prior post. I went to a new doctor who put me on a paleo/Whole30 diet, and I began to have far fewer headaches and less nerve pain. It seems that stress along with inflammation due to certain foods were wreaking havoc on my body. While I was able to add in a little bit of dairy, some rice and quinoa, and the occasional non-paleo sweetenter, I began to eat a mostly paleo/Whole30 compliant diet. A new diet meant that I was now in need of additional recipe makeovers if I wanted to feed my family foods they’ve grown to like.

To give the topping texture and color use a spoon to create peaks and valleys

Here is my latest version of our beloved Sausage Skillet Bake.

I would not exactly call it truly paleo or Whole30, but rather paleo or Whole30-friendly. My mashed potatoes are now made with organic Yukon gold potatoes and made creamy with some reserved starchy cooking water and clarified butter or ghee. This is our favorite brand- 4th & Heart. I also substituted chicken bone broth for the regular gluten-free broth as it is better for your digestive system. Finally, I swapped arrowroot starch for the corn starch in my first makeover.

Place under a high broiler setting until the topping is browned.

The best part about this recipe is that, unlike the original, you do not have to bake it for a long time because everything is pretty much cooked before it goes in the oven. The most you do is place the whole thing under the broiler for a few minutes to brown the potato topping. I also take a shortcut by prepping the filling in my Lodge cast-iron skillet while the potatoes cook and using that in place of transferring the dish to another casserole. Iron skillets are so affordable and versatile. They also withstand a lot of heat, so the broiler is no problem. Although you do cook the potatoes in another pot, you also mash them in that same pot, so cleanup is limited to just one pot and one pan, which is not bad for a fall family supper.

The recipe itself has classic fall flavors.

This is the one thing I made sure to preserve when changing up the ingredients. Although it sounds a bit odd to add apples to what looks like a Shepherd’s pie, an apple like a honeycrisp or other sweet yet firm variety, when paired with the sausage and thyme, creates the perfect slightly sweet and savory casserole. My kids rarely notice the apples are in there because they soften to the point of melding in with the vegetables in the dish and become almost potato-like. Also, the apples work well if you are trying a more paleo-compliant version like one with a sweet-potato topping. I think the flavor is so unique and delicious, this is why my family likes it better than a traditional Shepherd’s pie!

If you try this recipe or have a version to share, please comment below!

Total comfort food!

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