St. Paddy's Dublin Coddle Pizza
Slow cooked russet potatoes, onions & grilled seitan apple-sage sausage, plus pepper & garlic pork sausage, bacon, Irish cheddar & fresh parsley
Harkening back to my Irish roots this week with a hearty Dublin coddle recipe for St. Paddy’s Day. Coddle is a dish that’s typically meant to use up leftovers (though in this case you’ll end up with more leftovers), so the ingredients are not super set in stone. And since we have a vegetarian in our household, that means making some tweaks to the meatiness of the traditional dish. For that reason, the way you prepare this pizza is going to depend on whether you want to go full-carnivore, full-veg or a non-committal half-and-half like we did. We cooked the seitan in the slow cooker and added the sausage and bacon separately so they wouldn’t contaminate the meatless section, but if you aren’t worried about that, then I would definitely recommend adding everything to the slow cooker and letting all the flavors infuse together.
Recipe
Ingredients:
1 ball of pizza dough
salt & pepper
olive oil
flour for dusting
semolina flour for pizza stone
1 hunk of good Irish cheddar, grated
For the coddle*:
4 1/2 lbs russet potatoes, peeled & cut into large, equally-sized chunks
500 ml water
1 vegetable stock cube (or beef stock if not vegetarian)
1 lb sausages (we used half black pepper & garlic pork sausage, half seitan sausage with apple, sage & yukon potatoes)
a few slices of bacon
2 large onions, sliced
1 tablespoon chopped parsley, plus more to garnish
*Feel free to cut this down if you have a smaller crockpot or if you don't feel like having leftovers.
Directions:
Since we’re using a slow cooker here, you’re going to want to start this pizza in the morning or the night before—but it will be worth it, since the rest of the process is so easy. Start by boiling your water on the stove and stirring in the stock cube. Once it has dissolved, you can take the pot off the heat.
Grill your sausages* and bacon on a grill pan, turning over halfway through, until the bacon is crispy and the sausages have some grill marks but aren’t dried out. Drain them on paper towels and cut everything into hearty bite-sized chunks.
In your slow cooker, line the bottom with some of the onions, followed by a layer of meat (or seitan, or both) and potatoes, seasoning each layer with salt, pepper & parsley. Keep layering the ingredients in this order until you use them all up, and then pour the hot stock mixture over top of everything.
Now you can cover your slow cooker and let it sit—either on low for about 8 hours or on high for about 4 hours. Check on the water levels every once in a while if you can, adding more if necessary to make sure there’s about an inch of liquid on the bottom at all times so the mixture doesn’t dry out.
When you’re ready to start on the pizza, preheat your oven to 550° F, or as hot as it will go. (If you haven’t grilled your meat yet, do so now.)
When the oven is hot, prepare your dough using the instructions on the right. After you’ve baked it for a minute, take it out and brush it lightly with olive oil, followed by an even layer of the cheddar cheese. Now spoon your coddle mixture onto the pizza with whatever meat-seitan configuration you’re going with, sprinkle a little extra cheddar on top, and pop it in the oven.
Bake until the crust is a nice golden brown, garnish with some additional fresh parsley, and enjoy!
*If you’re using half-and-half like we did, you can grill the meat later and just do the seitan for now, since that’s all that will be going into the crockpot.