Slow Cooker Breakfast Beans With Chorizo

The highlight of the day is always dinner, not breakfast. I made this slow cooker beans and eggs earlier in the slow cooker that morning and by dinner time it was ready. I feel almost embarrassed about how easy this is given how fabulous it tastes. It's just a matter of emptying some tinned beans, sauces and chorizo sausage into a slow cooker and turning it on. Just before you serve it, you turn the slow cooker up to high and then add the eggs in. It transforms into the easiest, most delicious shakshuka or breakfast/dinner egg dish you can imagine. I urge you to give this a go if you are short of time or bed bound. Mr NQN immediately requested it for another night after slurping up two bowls of it.

They always say that men make the worst patients when sick but I have to say that I'm up there with the worst of them too. Despite the fact that I am told to lie in bed, I succumb immediately to dramatic bouts of boredom. When I was sick with the flu recently I had my computer and Netflix to keep my company but there is only so much television that you can watch. My schedule went a little like this:

10am: Put dinner in the slow cooker. Watch a few episodes of Orange is the New Black.

11:30am: Make lunch. Get scolded for leaving bedroom and scuttle back into bed.

12pm: Watch episodes of "Keeping up with the Kardashians"

2pm: Take a nap. I dream that I am now a member of the Kardashian family and they have changed my name to Klorraine Kardashian" and I have to show off my bum in a bikini a lot. Dream has transformed into a nightmare...

7pm: Dinner time. Bliss. Something to do.

8pm-midnight: Read a book.

Midnight to 3am: awake, of course having slept for much of the day.

So tell me Dear Reader, are you a good patient? Do you cook dinner when you are sick or does someone else or do you order in? And when sick how do you pass the time?

Slow Cooker Breakfast Beans With Chorizo & Egg

An Original Recipe by Lorraine Elliott

Preparation time: 5 minutes

Cooking time: 4 or 8 hours in slow cooker

• 1 large onion, peeled and diced
• 2 large garlic cloves, peeled and diced
• 565g/20oz jar your favourite tomato based pasta sauce
• 1 cup water (I usually put it in the emptied pasta sauce jar and swirl it around)
• 425g/15oz. tin chopped tomatoes, drained and rinsed
• 850g/30oz. tin red kidney beans, drained and rinsed
• 425g/15oz. tin cannellini beans, drained and rinsed
• 250g/8.83oz. chorizo sausage, sliced
• 1 small or large red chilli
• Salt and pepper
• Juice of half a lime
• 1 teaspoon ground cumin
• 1 teaspoon maple syrup or brown sugar
• 4 eggs

Step 1 - Place the onion, garlic, pasta sauce, water, tinned tomatoes, beans, chorizo and chilli in a slow cooker and heat on low for 8 hours or high for 4 hours. You can also do this in a stovetop pot and simmer for 1 hour or put it in the pressure cooker for 30 minutes. Season with salt and pepper, lime juice, cumin and sugar or syrup.

Step 2 - If the beans were on low heat and are now cooling, turn the heat up to high. Break eggs on top of the stew and allow to cook until the eggs are cooked to your liking. If you switch the slow cooker to "keep warm", any whole egg yolks will stay runny for up to an hour on warm. And I just had a few spoonfuls of this the day after and it tastes even better and the egg makes it creamy!