Tiny French Beans with Smoked Sausage

Horrible. I wish I'd read the reviews before I wasted my heirloom flageolets. The sausage was good (I used a beef sausage), but the beans were like little crunchy nuggets and all was burned to the sides of the crockpot. Eight hours is way too much time. Yuck.

I made this a little differently, but it turned out well. I used small red beans, HSF turkey kilbasa, a bit more celery seed and thyme, and Knorr chicken stock tub instead of broth. Took the full cooking time and was pretty good overall. No issues with meat texture, beans where still slightly firm after 7 hours, still some broth left. I am thinking this would be better with a white bean though so next time I will go that direction.

You must use a high quality sausage for this, and you must brown it thoroughly before adding to the crock. Also recommended is home made poultry stock, I've made this with both chicken and turkey and the mouth feel is incredible. I've made this multiple times, and I have also experienced the mushy sausage issue, but I just go with linguica and brown it as much as I can. I use dried herbs for convenience sake and it's still great. I also recommend throwing a generous handful of chopped parsley in at the end, or a chopped head of escarole a few minutes before serving. Kale would also work well too.

I used a chicken pesto sausage and thought it was delicious. I agree that it's not really a soup - more of a hearty bean dish.

I definitely think calling this "soup" is an big overstatement. It's more like just beans & sausage. I cooked this for about 6 hours which was plenty of time... The sausage itself had no flavor at all.. The beans were alright but sorta mushy. Took some leftovers to work the next day & they were even worse. Will not attempt this recipe again.

Overall pretty blah, bland and boring. I agree with a previous poster that traditional franks and beans would have been better. That being said, I think this recipe has some potential - perhaps a more flavorful sausage, or additional herbs. But this isn't a recipe I'm in a hurry to try again.

I cooked this as directed and thought the flavor and texture were AWFUL. I couldn't even serve it to my family.

Decent, but eight hours in a slow cooker is way too long. Try six hours, if you don't want mushy beans. Other than that, a solid recipe.

my husband LOVES this dish! we're always looking for good slow-cooker recipes for the fall and winter months, and this one is great. the fresh thyme adds a wonderful flavor. we love it with cornbread.

I had a hard time deciding how to rate this one. I LOVED the beans. I used the flageolet beans as specified in the recipe (got them on amazon.com) and after 7 hours, they were cooked perfectly. The turkey sausage, however, obtained a mushy texture inside. So, I'd rate the beans and their flavor a 5, but I'd rate the sausage a 1. The beans were especially good over grilled french bread and drizzled with some olive oil! I will definitely make this again, but I won't use turkey sausage.

I followed the recipe as written including using the specified French Flagolet beans. After 8 hours, the the beans were perfectly cooked. Flagolet beans are known for keeping their shape even after hours of cooking. Cooking Light should have specified a shorter cooking time or a lower setting for the alternatives. Over all, this was a decent recipe tasty, but not spectacular.

I followed the recipe exactly but took into consideration some reviewers feedback about 8 hours on high being too long. They were right. After about 5 hours it was close to being mushy- but not bad. It was edible but not very good. I did 1 tbl of dried thyme and it was pretty overwhelming. Just not a very good recipe I didn't think.

threw this together in 15 minutes and let it cook on high for 4 hours. i also used great northern beans, so perhaps they cook faster. it was just the right amount of liquid and the flavor was fantastic!

Looks like I'm one of the few that did not like this. The beans are mushy, some of the sausage was dry and by using 2# of beans, I now have enough to feed an army. I actually had to take some beans out of the crockpot because it was overflowing when cooking. And the beans aren't cheap, so this meal was not a winner.

Excellent recipe ... texture and flavors were spot on!