Italian Braised Escarole and Beans with Sausage

A simple dish of cooked bitter chicory greens and legumes, braised escarole with white beans is a cornerstone of Italian American cuisine. A nutritious, humble meal that can be adapted to many different greens, it's a perfect example of Italian cucina povera (poverty cuisine) that will still feed a family for a few bucks. Today I'll walk you through how it's made, as well as a few variations you could try.

Not quite liquid enough to be a soup and too wet to be a sauté, braised escarole and beans is one of many Italian dishes you'll find relying on greens, vegetables and beans. Giambotta / Ciambotta is another great example.

I learned of the dish while working for Chef Lenny Russo. An Italian American chef from Hoboken, he's the former chef-owner of the 6-time James Beard Award nominated Heartland Restaurant in St. Paul, and a pioneer in the Midwestern farm to table movement.

I spoke with Lenny over the holidays about the dish and, true to form, the saying I remembered hearing working on the line came up: "We didn't have a lot of money growing up so we ate a lot of escarole and beans. Sometimes we'd switch it up and have beans and escarole".

The recipe's in his book "Heartland: Farm-Forward Dishes from The Great Midwest". He's also passed the recipe onto others like Joe Yonan, a food editor for the Washington Post. Chef Russo's recipe is featured on the cover of Joe's book Cool Beans, shown below, with rapini substituted for the escarole.

A Few Escarole Substitutes

If you're not familiar, escarole (Cichorium Endivia var Latifolium) is a type of leafy green in the chicory family often used in Italian wedding soup. It has a slightly bitter flavor but is more tame than dandelions or broccoli raab. But, unless you're in a large city or have an Italian grocer nearby it can be tricky to find escarole greens.

The good news is there's a number of leafy green vegetables that are great substitutes for escarole, although all of them have slightly different cooking times, tastes and textures. Mustard greens are probably the most widely available substitute, but I think rapini or chicory greens are the best. Here's a little background on the different greens you could use if escarole isn't available.

Rapini / Broccoli Raab

Much different than broccoli or broccolini, broccoli raab is more bitter than escarole, as well as more expensive. The stems also require longer cooking to be tender.

A quintessential Italian ingredient, besides cooking as a side dish it's traditionally used in orrechiette alla Barese and a number of other recipes.

Mustard Greens

Mustard greens have a comparable texture to escarole, but have a spicy Brassica flavor that mellows with cooking and very mild bitterness.

The stems take much longer to cook and should be removed for this dish, or cooked slowly until very tender before adding to the beans.

Dandelion Greens

Dandelions, wild and cultivated are good escarole substitutes as they're a close relative of escarole. Cultivated dandelions have much more leaf than stem and require less cooking time.

Wild dandelions (unless very young) have tougher stems that require extended cooking to be tender.

Chicory Greens

Escarole is a chicory, but not all chicories are escarole. Somewhere in between the bitterness of dandelions and escarole, fresh chicory greens (Chicorium intybus) are the most difficult of all the greens I've mentioned to come by, at least for me.

I occasionally see them at Middle Eastern grocers like Holy Land in Minneapolis as they're used to make things like Hindbeh.

How to Make Escarole and Beans

The first step is to soak the great northern / cannellini beans overnight. Although you can use canned white beans, cooking your own is an important step to building good flavor in the dish and is a good excuse to try your hand at using a clove-studded onion if you haven't before.

After soaking the beans are drained and simmered with a few peeled carrots, dried bay leaves, and the clove-studded onion until the beans are tender.

The only other prep to do before cooking the dish is to wash and dry the escarole and cut into 1 inch dice so the leaves fit on a spoon. I sliced a few roasted links of mild Italian fennel sausage to add to mine, but it's optional.

To cook the dish you start by sweating a large clove of minced garlic in a wide pan. I love my 10 inch sautoir pan for this. If you want to add sausage, you can brown ground sausage or links and cook the garlic in the drippings as I've done.

Once the escarole is wilted the beans and sausage (if using) are added, along with some homemade chicken stock and crushed red pepper flakes. While it can be tempting to add the bean cooking liquid, chicken stock will add a better flavor and keep the color bright.

Simmer the pot gently until the greens are tender and taste good to you, then serve drizzled with a thread of extra virgin olive oil and freshly grated parmesan cheese at the table. Pecorino or aged sheep's milk cheese is my favorite if you can find some.

Variations

The dish is great all by itself but there's also plenty of different ways it can be adapted. If you add diced mirepoix before adding the garlic to the pan and increase the amount of chicken stock it makes a great soup.

As pictured on the cover of Joe's book, it's also the perfect thing to serve with crusty Italian bread or a good slice of sourdough to mop up the juices. Anyway you serve it, it's a delicious, nutritious meal with lots of ways to adapt it to what you have on hand.

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