Easy Sausage Tray bake (With Sweet Potatoes And Orange)

A flavourful and extremely easy to throw together sausage tray bake with sweet potatoes, green beans and pecan nuts in a lovely orange, maple syrup and cinnamon gravy. And it's even tastier with a little melted blue cheese on top. Perfect for a quick midweek meal!

📝 Ingredients

• 1 onion (chopped into chunks)
• 1 medium sweet potato (peeled and chopped into small chunks (about 2cm))
• 6 garlic cloves (unpeeled but ‘squashed’ a little with your palm)
• 8 sausages (good quality (I like Italian style pork or chicken))
• 1 tablespoon olive oil (for cooking)
• 7 ounces green beans ((about 2 handfuls))
• 1 ounce pecan nuts ((a handful) or another kind of nut such as walnuts or hazelnuts if you prefer)
• 4 sprigs fresh thyme ((or 1 teaspoon dried))
• 1 orange (zest and juice)
• 2 tablespoons maple syrup (or honey, rice malt syrup, rice bran syrup)
• 1 teaspoon cinnamon
• 1/4 cup blue cheese (optional (or feta or goat's cheese))

👨‍🍳 Instructions

1. 1Preheat the oven to 200C/390F.
2. 2Put the onions and sweet potato chunks into a large baking dish with the garlic cloves.
3. 3Add the sausages to the dish and toss everything together with a good drizzle of olive oil. Bake uncovered for about 30 minutes or until the sausages are nice and golden, tossing half way through cooking.
4. 4Whisk together the orange zest and juice, maple syrup and cinnamon. Then add the green beans, nuts, leaves from the thyme sprigs and salt and pepper to taste.
5. 5Pour the marinade all over everything in the dish. Bake for about another 15 minutes (or until the sweet potatoes are done). Scatter the blue cheese over the top of the dish 5 minutes before the end of the cooking time to melt.
6. 6Serve with creamy mashed potatoes, polenta, crusty bread or a simple green salad.