Our Dublin coddle recipe makes the deliciously hearty Irish stew of sausages, bacon, potatoes and onions cooked low and slow with fresh thyme and parsley. It’s classic Irish comfort food. Our recipe is fairly traditional with just a few tweaks, including the addition of baby carrots and bumping up the fresh thyme for big herby flavours. Serve with HP sauce, braised cabbage, and Irish soda bread or crusty sourdough.
If you’re a fan of the comforting combination of sausages and potatoes and you’re looking for a recipe for a hearty snags and spuds dish that isn’t bangers and mash – hard to believe, but some people don’t like mashed potatoes; and if that’s you, I implore you to make Terence’s creamy potato mash or heavenly Irish colcannon – then try this Dublin coddle recipe.
A Dublin coddle is classic Irish comfort food and one of my favourite Irish dishes. I was going to publish this recipe for Dublin coddle with sausages, bacon, potatoes and thyme when I re-shared our Irish recipes on St Patrick’s Day, but life got in the way. Then an Irish friend reminded me that Dublin coddle is eaten year-round, as a beloved weekend family meal, particularly for Sunday dinner.
So please consider this Dublin coddle recipe for the weekend if it’s still cold where you are – or if it’s getting cold, as it is here, where we’re tucking into comforting pastas, hearty stews and warming soups. If you are a fan of the sausages and potatoes combo, try this scrummy penne with sausage, potatoes and peppers, which I created from leftovers from ‘poor man’s potatoes’ from Southern Spain, one of those dishes that make even better leftovers.
Now before I tell you more about this Dublin coddle recipe, I have a favour to ask. Grantourismo is reader-supported. If you’ve enjoyed our recipes, please consider supporting Grantourismo. For instance, you could buy something on Amazon, such as one of these classic cookbooks for serious cooks or cookbooks for culinary travellers; book a cooking class or meal with locals on EatWith; or buy a handcrafted KROK, the best mortar and pestle ever.
And if you’re looking for more cooking inspiration, we have many hundreds of recipes from around the world in our archives from places we’ve lived, worked and travelled. Note that you can save your favourites by clicking on the heart on the right of any post to create your own private account. Now let me tell you more about this Dublin coddle recipe.
Dublin Coddle Recipe with Sausages, Bacon, Potatoes, Thyme and Parsley
I adore this Dublin coddle recipe for the Irish stew of sausages, bacon, potatoes and onions cooked low and slow in water with fresh thyme and parsley. Terence is the one with Irish heritage. My dad’s side of the family are of English ancestry but I think I enjoy cooking classic Irish fare more than Terence.
Probably because traditional Irish food is rustic, earthy and hearty, like the Russian-Ukrainian food of my mum’s side of the family. Both cuisines are distinguished by loads of comforting porridges, warming soups and hearty stews, vegetable sides comprised of cabbage or potatoes, plenty of flaky pies and filled pastries, and even dumplings.
As a result of famine, both cuisines are marked by a tradition of frugality in the kitchen, of stretching meals and repurposing leftovers – like my baboushka’s bottomless pots of borscht and her boiled dumplings cooked for lunch and dinner that were refried for breakfast the next day. If you’re on a zero-waste journey or just hate seeing food go to waste, you’ll love this Dublin coddle recipe.
The Dublin coddle is a centuries-old Irish dish, dating back to the Irish famine of the mid 1700s, starting out in life as a meal made from leftovers and whatever was on hand that could be cooked up – whether it was scraps of bacon, a few sausages, or vegetables especially root vegetables such as potatoes, parsnips and carrots. The lot was thrown in the pot.
Like a lot of stews that came from ‘poor cooking’, which the Italians call ‘povera cucina’, a Dublin coddle was a working class dish, often called a ‘city stew’, born from frugality. To ‘coddle’ means to cook low and slow in water – think coddled eggs – with a little butter sometimes added to give richness.
An Irish friend said her grandmother would never have wasted butter in a stew, but her mother always added nobs of butter. The same friend said her family’s Dublin cobble was a dense stew with little liquid, while a former colleague who was Dublin-born, said his mother’s recipe was like a potato soup with sausages and vegetables.
Worth noting: coddling sausages, potatoes and bacon in water is far healthier than frying them up in oil, although I do sauté the onions in olive oil until soft, glossy and fragrant. That’s the only thing I’d fry, because if you’re frying the ingredients first then you’re not coddling them. Also, I wouldn’t want to risk the wrath of my Irish friends!
Let me share a few tips to making this Dublin coddle recipe.
Tips to Making this Dublin Coddle Recipe
I only have a few tips to making this Dublin coddle recipe, as it’s quick and easy comfort food. Some of the oldest Dublin coddle recipes are little more than a few lines long.
What to Cook Your Dublin Coddle In?
I make this Dublin coddle in a large deep frying pan, but you could use a skillet or Dutch oven. If you don’t own a Dutch oven yet, we highly recommend buying one. Terence uses his Dutch oven for sourdough baking, while I use it for for soups and stews. These are some of my favourite Dutch oven recipes. A Le Creuset Dutch oven might be the most desirable, but we love the more affordable Lodge Dutch oven.
Dublin Coddle Ingredients
As the Dublin coddle started out as a dish made with leftovers, back in the day cooks threw in whatever vegetables needed using. Not so these days…
The Vegetables
These days, Dublin coddle recipe ingredients are much more prescriptive. While all Irish cooks agree potatoes are the heart of the dish, one of my Dublin-born Irish friends said carrots are acceptable while another said carrots are essential.
Read the comments at the end of Dublin coddle recipes and Dubliners these days get very particular about what’s in their coddle, with many ruling out carrot. Having said, if you’re not sharing pics of your Dublin coddle on social media…
Sausages
Irish Dublin coddle recipes often call for ‘butchers sausages’, which are quality sausages made from premium meat, typically pork meat, bought from a butcher shop. They’re proper sausages, in other words, not factory made snags that contain ‘mystery’ ingredients that you’d probably prefer remain a mystery. These days butcher’s sausages often get called ‘artisanal sausages’ or ‘gourmet sausages’.
I used a mix of Australian sausages from our local butcher shop, including free-range Berkshire pork sausages with apple, pepper and herbs, and grass-fed Angus beef sausages with garlic and herbs. In a traditional Irish Dublin coddle recipe, the sausages go into the pot raw and are not fried first.
Thyme and Parsley
Fresh thyme and fresh parsley are essential to a Dublin coddle, but most recipes call for just a few sprigs of thyme. Perhaps due to our years living in the Middle East, where thyme, especially wild thyme, is used in abundance, I adore the herb and can’t stop at a few sprigs, and use a generous sprinkle of thyme.
When it comes to fresh parsley, curly parsley, also called butcher’s parsley, is traditionally used in a Dublin coddle, but I prefer flat leaf parsley, also called Continental parsley, which I shower on the dish, and add more when plating. Use whatever herb you prefer in whatever portions to suit your palate.
Season, Sprinkle and Serve
Lastly, season with salt and pepper if you like, or let guests adjust their dishes to their own taste and serve cracked black pepper and sea salt on the table, and sprinkle with more fresh thyme sprigs and chopped parsley.
The Irish traditionally serve their Dublin coddle with a simple braised cabbage side (recipe coming soon; I have a healthy version), a bottle of ‘brown sauce’ such as HP sauce on the table (for dipping your sausages in) and Irish soda bread for soaking up the buttery brothy juices at the bottom of the pan.
I love crusty sourdough bread as Terence has long spoiled me with beautiful boules of sourdough coming out of the oven every few days. But try your hand at baking Irish soda bread if you enjoy baking. Start with Aran McMahon’s easy soda bread recipe on the Irish Times website. You’ll also find loads of authentic Irish soda bread recipes on the Irish Examiner’s food site.
Dublin Coddle Recipe with Sausages, Bacon, Potatoes, Thyme and Parsley
Equipment
Ingredients
- 2 tbsp olive oil - or a little more if needed
- 2 large onions - thickly sliced
- 20 g butter
- 4 thick bacon rashers - roughly chopped
- 800 g waxy potatoes - peeled and cut into small pieces
- 8 butcher’s sausages - 'gourmet sausages' or 'artisanal sausages', mix of pork and beef
- 12 baby carrots
- 400 ml water - plus more if needed
- 12 sprigs fresh thyme - or to taste
- ¼ tsp salt - or to taste
- ¼ tsp white pepper - or to taste
- 1 cup fresh flat leaf parsley - roughly chopped
Instructions
- In a large, deep, lidded pan or Dutch oven over medium, heat the olive oil and sauté the onion until soft and fragrant.
- To the same pan, add the butter, bacon, potato pieces, fresh thyme, salt and white pepper, and stir to combine.
- Add the sausages, spacing them evenly and pushing them down between the potatoes, arrange the carrots on top, pour the water over the lot, put the lid on, and reduce the heat to low.
- Cook over low heat for 20 minutes, remove the lid, give it a stir, allowing the sausages and carrots to drop to the bottom so that they brown a little, return the lid and cook for another 10 minutes or so until the potatoes are tender. If needed, add a little more water.
- Taste, and if the potatoes are cooked through, it’s ready. If not, cook for another 5-10 minutes and taste again. Use tongs to retrieve the carrots from the bottom of the pan and arrange them on top, sprinkle on a little more salt and pepper, more fresh thyme sprigs if you like, and shower with fresh parsley.
- Serve at the centre of the table with more herbs, salt and pepper, a ‘brown sauce’ such as HP, and crusty bread.
Notes
Nutrition
Please do let us know if you make this Dublin coddle recipe, as we’d love to know how it turns out for you. Feel free to share your tips in the comments below.
