Lentil — Chicken Sausage Stew — The Rotation That Runs on Muscle Memory

Construction is relentless in August. Three houses in various stages, the heat at ninety-three every day, the crew cycling through water like it's being rationed (it's not, but the way they drink it you'd think it was). My back is a daily negotiation — wake up, assess, ibuprofen, stretch, pray, work. The back doesn't care about my emotional state. The back has its own agenda and its agenda is pain, and the only thing that overrides pain is work, which creates more pain, which requires more ibuprofen, which is a cycle that I recognize as unsustainable and continue anyway because sustainable is a concept for people with desk jobs and functional spines.

Clay called on Sunday. He sounded slightly better. Slightly. The flatness is still there but there's texture underneath, like a painting that's been covered with a layer of gray but the colors are still visible if you look. He said he's been talking to someone — a chaplain, maybe, or a counselor, he didn't specify — and the talking is helping. "Not fixing," he said. "Helping." I know the difference. Fixing is for plumbing and engines. Helping is for humans. You don't fix a person who's been next to an explosion that killed his friends. You help. You help for as long as they need it, which is forever, which is the timeline I'm on with my own mine collapse, twenty-eight years and counting.

I made comfort food all week. Soup beans Monday. Pot roast Wednesday. Fried chicken Saturday. The rotation of safety, the foods that my hands know without my brain's involvement, the meals that come from muscle memory and arrive at the table tasting like the kitchen has been running on autopilot, which it has, because autopilot is how you function when the pilot is somewhere over the ocean worrying about his son.

The tomatoes are in. The garden is exploding with Early Girls and Better Boys and a Cherokee Purple that I planted for the first time this year. Cherokee Purples are heirloom tomatoes — dark, ugly, misshapen, and the best-tasting tomato on earth. They taste like a tomato that time-traveled from 1820 and is confused by modernity but confident in its flavor. I sliced one on Saturday with salt and ate it over the sink and it tasted like August and like hope and like the garden doing its job even when the gardener is barely doing his.

Soup beans on Monday is a ritual, not a recipe — and this stew lands in that same place in my rotation, the one my hands can build while my brain is somewhere over the ocean. When Clay called on Sunday and I heard that gray-painted-over voice, I knew the week ahead needed something that could cook itself, something that smelled like a house that was still standing. Lentils and chicken sausage in one pot, low heat, no fuss — that’s the kind of cooking that keeps you upright when upright is the most you can manage.

Lentil & Chicken Sausage Stew

Prep Time: 15 min | Cook Time: 45 min | Total Time: 1 hr | Servings: 6

Ingredients

• 1 lb chicken sausage links, sliced into 1/2-inch rounds
• 1 1/2 cups green or brown lentils, rinsed
• 1 medium yellow onion, diced
• 3 cloves garlic, minced
• 3 medium carrots, peeled and sliced
• 3 stalks celery, chopped
• 1 can (14.5 oz) diced tomatoes, undrained
• 6 cups low-sodium chicken broth
• 1 tsp smoked paprika
• 1/2 tsp ground cumin
• 1/2 tsp dried thyme
• 1/4 tsp black pepper
• 1/2 tsp kosher salt, plus more to taste
• 2 tbsp olive oil
• 2 cups fresh baby spinach (optional, stirred in at the end)

Instructions

1. Brown the sausage. Heat olive oil in a large heavy-bottomed pot or Dutch oven over medium-high heat. Add sausage slices and cook 4—5 minutes, turning once, until browned on both sides. Transfer to a plate and set aside.
2. Soften the aromatics. Reduce heat to medium. Add onion, carrots, and celery to the same pot. Cook 5—6 minutes, stirring occasionally, until softened. Add garlic and cook 1 minute more until fragrant.
3. Build the base. Stir in smoked paprika, cumin, thyme, salt, and pepper. Add diced tomatoes with their juices and stir to combine, scraping up any browned bits from the bottom of the pot.
4. Add lentils and broth. Pour in chicken broth and add rinsed lentils. Stir everything together and bring to a boil over high heat.
5. Simmer low and slow. Return browned sausage to the pot. Reduce heat to low, cover partially, and simmer 30—35 minutes until lentils are fully tender and the stew has thickened. Stir occasionally.
6. Finish and serve. If using spinach, stir it in during the last 2 minutes of cooking until wilted. Taste and adjust salt and pepper. Ladle into bowls and serve with crusty bread or cornbread.

Nutrition (per serving)

Calories: 370 | Protein: 28g | Fat: 11g | Carbs: 38g | Fiber: 14g | Sodium: 620mg