Dinner at Chez Ablaze

What is Coddle? I'll get to that, don't worry. Having spent almost twenty years living in and near Dublin and befriending many Dubliners, we heard a lot about Coddle, which is a dish traditional to Ireland's capital city. We were served it on visits to these friends houses and realised it's pretty damn good, so we have taken to cooking it for ourselves every now and then.

What is Coddle?

I won't reinvent the wheel here, so Wikipedia tells us:

Coddle (sometimes Dublin coddle) is an Irish dish which is often made to use up leftovers, and therefore without a specific recipe. However, it most commonly consists of layers of roughly sliced sausages (pork sausages) and rashers (thinly sliced, somewhat-fatty back bacon) with chunky potatoes, sliced onion, salt, pepper, and herbs (parsley or chives). Traditionally, it can also include barley.

Coddle is particularly associated with the capital of Ireland, Dublin. It was reputedly a favourite dish of the writers Seán O'Casey and Jonathan Swift, and it appears in several references to Dublin, including the works of James Joyce.

The dish is braised in the stock produced by boiling the pieces of bacon and sausages. The dish is cooked in a pot with a well-fitting lid in order to steam the ingredients left uncovered by the broth. Sometimes raw sliced potato is added, but traditionally it was eaten with bread. The only seasonings are usually salt, pepper, and occasionally parsley. Coddle could be considered Irish comfort food, and it is inexpensive, easy to prepare and quick to cook. It is often eaten in the winter months. In the days when Catholics were not allowed to eat meat on Fridays, this meal was often eaten on Thursdays, and it allowed a family to use up any remaining sausages or rashers.

Ablaze's borrowed Traditional Dublin Coddle

Ingredients

Gammon (or rashers or roast ham)
3 Carrots
2 large onions
Large pack of cocktail sausages
8 large Potatoes
Chicken Stock
Salt
Pepper

STEP 1 - Our Dublin friends may not agree, but we tend to fry off the sausages a little bit before adding them, so frying these off is a good step 1.

STEP 2 - Fry of the onions a little as well before adding them to your large saucepan.

STEP 3 - Make up your chicken stock and add to the saucepan.

STEP 4 - Now chop your carrots and add to the large saucepan.

STEP 5 - Now peel your spuds and chop them into smaller chunks and add to your large saucepan.

STEP 6 - Chop up your Gammon and remove any fatty bits and add to the saucepan.

STEP 7 - Now for the easy part, put it all in the saucepan and add hot water until it covers the top of all the food.

STEP 9 - Just cook away now until the Potatoes and carrots are cooked through, approx. 50 minutes.

Bon Appetite

Thanks as always for stopping by. Hopefully you might give this a try some time

Peace Out