Italian Sausage and Beans Skillet

This hearty Italian Sausage and Beans Skillet is a tasty, healthy, one-pot meal! Big chunks of spicy Italian sausage (or sweet or mild if you prefer) with green beans, cannellini beans, onions, garlic, salty olives, and fresh basil all smothered in a sauce of San Marzano tomatoes makes for a satisfying dinner of rustic Italian flavors. This is truly a one-pot meal and needs no accompaniment, but if you’d like to serve something on the side I’d recommend either a side salad with balsamic vinaigrette or a hunk of crusty bread. Either one would be a nice complement! Not only if this dish filling and flavorful, but each 1 ¼ cups serving is just 291 calories or 6 WW Points. To view your WW Points for this recipe and track it in the WW app or site, click here!

Recipe Tips

• Sausage Type: I use hot Italian poultry sausage because I like spice, but if you don’t like the heat, feel free to substitute mild or sweet Italian poultry sausage. Wegmans (my local grocery store) sells uncooked Italian sausage specifically labeled “poultry sausage” but either uncooked turkey sausage or chicken sausage will work.
• Cutting the Sausage:
  • If your uncooked sausage comes in links, you’ll want to remove the casings for this recipe. I found it easiest to cut the sausage into 1” chunks before removing the casings (it cuts easier) and then just pushing each piece out of the casing.
  • If you are able to find loose/bulk uncooked poultry sausage without casings (or for example, Wegmans also sells their sausage in uncooked patties that can just be mushed together to make one big pile of uncooked sausage), you can use that instead and just make it into 1” chunks or roll it into 1” meatballs.
  • You could also just leave the sausage loose (like ground meat) and break it into crumbles which would save the effort of breaking it into chunks, but I rather liked having larger meatball-like pieces, so I do recommend cooking the larger chunks if you have time.
• Green Beans: I used fresh green beans for this recipe, but if you have leftover green beans or canned green beans you could use those instead. If your green beans are pre-cooked or canned (and drained), just toss them in at the end with the olives rather than adding them earlier and let them heat through for a few minutes.
• San Marzano Tomatoes: San Marzano are a special variety of plum tomato that are especially delicious and make for a rich and flavorful sauce in this dish. They generally cost a little bit more than regular canned plum tomatoes, but I think it’s worth it! To “roughly chop” them for this recipe you can either pour the can into a mixing bowl and cut the tomatoes with a butter knife or you can just wait and break them up with a spatula/cooking spoon once you add them to the pan.

Looking for more tasty One-Pot Meals like this Italian Sausage and Beans Skillet? Check out my Chicken Taco Rice Skillet, One-Pot Bacon Broccoli Mac and Cheese, Cheesy Spicy Black Bean Skillet, One-Pot Meatballs and Macaroni, Maple Dijon Chicken and Squash Skillet, One-Pot Creamy Tomato Pasta with Chicken and Spinach, One-Pot Cheesy Chili Mac, One-Pot Turkey Veggie Spaghetti, Sheet Pan Meatloaves with Roasted Potatoes and Green Beans, One-Pot Cajun Chicken and Sausage Pasta, Chicken Pot Pasta, Mexican Chicken and Cauliflower Rice Skillet, Beefy American Goulash, and many more in the One-Pot Meals category of my recipe index!