Dublin Coddle - Irish Sausage, Bacon, Onion and Potato Hotpot

Ingredients

• 2 kg potatoes
• 2 large onions, peeled and sliced thickly
• 450 g good quality pork sausages
• 450 g bacon, piece thick cut
• 500 ml water
• 1 ham stock cube or beef or chicken stock cube, if ham stock isn't available
• 3-4 tablespoons fresh parsley, chopped
• salt (to season)
• coarse-ground pepper (to season)

Directions

1. 1

   Peel the potatoes. Cut large ones into three or four pieces: leave smaller ones whole. Finely chop the parsley. Boil the water and in it dissolve the bouillon cube.

2. 2

   Grill or broil the sausages and bacon long enough to colour them. Be careful not to dry them out! Drain briefly on paper towels. When drained, chop the bacon into one-inch pieces. If you like, chop the sausages into large pieces as well. (Some people prefer to leave them whole.).

3. 3

   Preheat the oven to 300F / 150°C In a large flameproof heavy pot with a tight lid, start layering the ingredients: onions, bacon, sausages or sausage pieces, potatoes. Season each layer liberally with fresh-ground pepper and the chopped fresh parsley. Continue until the ingredients are used up. Pour the bouillon mixture over the top. On the stove, bring the liquid to a boil. Immediately turn the heat down and cover the pot. (You may like to additionally put a layer of foil underneath the pot lid to help seal it.).

4. 4

   Put the covered pot in the oven and cook for at least three hours. (Four or five hours won't hurt it.) At the two-hour point, check the pot and add more water if necessary. There should be about an inch of liquid at the bottom of the pot at all times.

5. 5

   To Serve. Guinness, bottled or draft, goes extremely well with this dish (indeed, adding a little to the pot toward the end of the process wouldn't hurt anything). Another good accompaniment is fresh soda bread, used to mop up the gravy!