I've been running a curry train more-or-less continuously since my mom left. Reiver was about ready for a break from non-stop curries though and we'd hit a point where we were getting slightly low on leftovers anyway, so I decided to change it up for a bit. And, given that we're trying to be a bit more budget-conscious right now, I figured it might be a good time to revisit the Budget Byte$ blog. We had everything but the sausages on hand for this Dublin coddle already and it sounded tasty, so it seemed as good a place to start as any.

It was a great success! Everyone loved it. Everything was nicely cooked and the flavour was excellent.

And relatively affordable as well. Not as cheap as a dal, but not terrible either. I wanted to check since the Budget Byte$ recipes aren't always quite as affordable as one might like. At least not here in NZ. I was shocked to see pound cake come up on the blog and intrigued to see how they'd made it more budget-friendly. The answer? They hadn't. Apparently pound cake is still an affordable dessert in the US. They'd figured the 4 eggs you'd need for it would only cost $0.68. That's $0.68 total, not each! And the 240g of butter was supposedly only another $0.98. I think they figured the whole cake would have cost just over $5 to make. Meanwhile, here, the butter alone would run nearly $5! So, when they said that the coddle should cost a bit over $11 to make, I was skeptical... But it's not too bad! I think you'd struggle to do it for under $15 here, but that's still not terrible when you get anywhere between 3-6 servings out of it (depending on how big your portions are).

Running the numbers based on grocery prices here, I figured it should probably cost somewhere between $15 and $20 to make this coddle, depending on how you buy your groceries. If you're willing to get a 10kg bag of potatoes, use 1kg for this, and find another use for the other 9kg, then that helps bring the price down through economy of scale. Same deal with the onions. If you just buy the 2 onions you need for the stew, it'll cost you a bit more per onion than if you're willing to buy a 2kg bag of onions and use the others somewhere else. I think this would also be a good place to use bacon pieces rather than the streaky bacon called for in the recipe as you're just chopping it up anyway and you can get bacon pieces for ~$10/kg, while it can be tricky to find streaky bacon for much under $20/kg. So, if you're willing to buy in bulk, you can probably make this for $15. If you're just buying exactly as much of each ingredient as you need for this particular recipe, then it'd probably come out closer to $20 for the pot. So, definitely not the cheapest meal ever, but, as noted, not ridiculous either.

Dublin Coddle

Slightly adapted from Budget Byte$"

Ingredients

• 250g bacon pieces (or chopped streaky bacon)
• 450g sausages (I like beef, but any will work)
• 2 onions, halved and sliced
• 4 tsp. minced/crushed garlic
• 1 tsp. black pepper, ground
• 1kg potatoes, cut into 3-4cm pieces
• 2 c. chicken broth
• 1 tsp. dried parsley
• 1/2 tsp. dried thyme

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 150°C (300°F).
2. Cook of the bacon in a Dutch oven over medium heat.
3. Add the sausages and sear on all sides.
4. Remove sausages and bacon from the pan (leaving any grease behind).
5. Bacon pieces are less fatty than streaky bacon, so you might need to add an extra splash of oil at this point depending on what you used.
6. Add the onion and garlic and cook until softened and beginning to colour.
7. Add pepper, potatoes, chicken stock, parsley, and thyme and stir to combine.
8. Place sausages and bacon on top.
9. Cover and bake at 150°C (300°F) for 90 minutes.
10. Remove lid and continue baking for another 30 minutes.

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Variants

InstantPot Version

I think this recipe would lend itself particularly well to an InstantPot/multi-cooker, I just need to figure out how to adjust the seasonings and liquid for it.