When I can get my hands on a nice piece of corned beef (not easy in Eastern Canada), I love to make corned beef and cabbage on the holiday. It's my way of sharing some of my family heritage with my grandchildren. This year, though, I decided to try another meal I remembered from my childhood ... my Grandma Kelley's Irish Coddle.
Irish Coddle is a one-pot stew of sorts that's good all year round, not just on St. Patrick's Day. If you're a fan of bacon (who isn't?) and sausage, this is an easy recipe for a lazy weekend supper.
Ingredients:
- 10 slices bacon, chopped into 1-inch pieces
- 1 lb. bangers or other high quality pork sausages
- 2 lbs. potatoes, peeled and sliced into 1/2-inch thick rounds
- 2 onions, sliced into 1/2-inch thick rings
- Salt & freshly ground pepper, to taste
- 3 tablespoons chopped parsley, divided
- 2 cups beef broth
- Preheat the oven to 300 degrees.
- Heat a dutch oven over medium heat. Add the chopped bacon and cook, stirring frequently, until crisp, then remove from the pan with a slotted spoon and drain on a paper towel.
- Next, brown the bangers in the reserved bacon fat for a few minutes, just until they start to brown but not so they are cooked all the way through. Remove the sausages from the pot and set aside. Discard any leftover bacon fat in the bottom but keep the crispy bits.
- Layer half of the sliced potatoes, then layer half of the sliced onions over the potatoes. Season with salt and pepper, then sprinkle half of the bacon and one tablespoon of parsley on top. Repeat with the remaining potatoes and onions, seasoning with salt and pepper again and sprinkling with the remaining bacon and another tablespoon parsley. Place the browned sausages/bangers on top and pour the beef broth over everything. (Hint: I prefer to cut my sausage into chunks rather than leave them whole as in the picture but either way works.)
- Cover the pot with a lid and place it in the oven. Bake for 3 hours, checking halfway through cooking to make sure the liquid hasn't all dried up and adding an extra cup of broth if necessary to keep about 1 inch of liquid covering the bottom of the pot at all times.
- Remove from oven and sprinkle with remaining tablespoon of chopped parsley before serving. Dublin Coddle is very forgiving and can stand cooking an extra hour or two if you need it, and the leftovers are amazing the next day even.
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Nancy
Oh, I love comfort food - anything with stew, potatoes and onions tastes divine!
ReplyDeleteSuggestion: can you make writing a routine? Like a 9-to-5 job?
Or are you the kind of person that needs a moment of inspiration to write - then writes nonstop for hours, forgetting about the real world, until it all comes out?
(I'm the second kind of person. I can't make anything useful a routine)
Thank you!
adissidente [at] gmail [dot] com
Great question!
DeleteYour Irish Coddle sounds scrumptious! Can't wait to try it. Thanks for sharing it.
ReplyDeletecrossnstitch2 at aol dot com
I love a good corn beef dinner! Unfortunately haven't had one in a very long time!
ReplyDeleteYummy-sounding recipe. Thanks for sharing. Look forward to hearing what makes everyone tick.
ReplyDeleteThat looks like it would be my husband's favorite meal. I'll stick with the corn beef. Maybe next year, If I remember we can have both. Happy Post St. Paddy's Day, Nancy.
ReplyDeleteThank you for the recipe. I do like corned beef, but not the cabbage.
ReplyDeletemarypres(AT)gmail(DOT)com
Thanks for the great recipe. I think I shall try it if I Can.
ReplyDeletedebby236 at hotmail dot com
harperyn [at] outlook [dot] com writes:
ReplyDeleteOoh boy, just looking at the ingredients list and I know my meat-lovin' SO would devour this dish! Me, not so much as I have the flu and can only handle bland things. :(
My question is, how do you keep yourself from "plagiarizing" from already written published works? It seems as if there's been an explosion of trendy genres, albeit really great stuff!, tends to look really cookie-cuttered-template-wise. Hopefully you understand what I mean, poor grammar and all. :D
Lavender, that's a very good question about similar tropes. However, there's a huge difference between plagiarising someone and trying to put new life in an old plot. Plagiarising is most often a word-for-word copy of another author's work. Names are changed, maybe the place where the scene takes place, but if compared side-by-side, they are simply the same scene/same words.
DeleteRomance tropes are limited to a dozen or so core tropes. Any author who values her craft strives to do something different with the trope. As an example, the secret baby trope is nearly as old as romance. Most often, it revolves around a couple who have split before the woman finds out she's with child. OR, she knows but doesn't want to rope the hero into a marriage they're not ready to commit to. For my contemporary romance, Home is Where the Hunk is, I twisted the standard plot by having the father KNOW he's the father, but not knowing who the mother is. That books has won a couple of awards and each time, the most often made comment was the fresh take on the trope.
Every writer, with the exception of the "cheaters", wants their book to stand on it's own merits. You're going to get the occasion similar phrase, it's inevitable, but one common phrase is a far cry from copying whole scenes and words. The hardworking and honest writers keep from plagiarising by just not doing it.
Long-winded but I hope this answers your question.
Thank you for your detailed answer! I hope you weren't offended (because I was certainly was not accusing you of anything of that sort). T'was meant for all authors in general.
DeleteNo offense taken. I assumed your question was "in general".
DeleteThere recipe sounds great minus onions. I never eat them or anything that's been around them lol.
ReplyDeleteMsredk at AOL dot com
I'm all about one-pot meals. Thanks for the recipe, Nancy.
ReplyDelete