• Ingredients
  • 4-6 oz. bacon, diced
  • 1 lb. fresh sausage links
  • 1 large onion, sliced
  • 6 oz. mushrooms, quartered or halved
  • 2 cloves garlic, minced
  • 8 oz. baby carrots
  • Salt and pepper
  • 1 cup dark beer
  • 3 or 4 potatoes, halved or quartered
  • Parsley

In a Dutch oven, fry bacon until crisp. Remove from pan. Add sausage links to the pan and brown on all sides. Remove from pan. Add onion and mushrooms to the pan and stir-fry until onion is translucent and mushrooms are browned a little. Stir in garlic and stir-fry until fragrant. Stir in the carrots and salt and pepper. Let it cook until the carrots are heated through. Stir in the beer. Heat to boiling. Reduce heat to simmer and add potatoes. Let it return to simmer. Stir in the bacon. Once it is has returned to a nice little simmer, nestle the sausages into the dish. Sprinkle with parsley. Bake, covered, at 300 degrees for 2 hours. Check that the carrots and potatoes are tender. Serve warm.

NOTES: Back when my husband was flying to the Aleutian Islands, we did a lot of food trades. It was hard for the residents there to get fresh produce, so we would make a run to Costco and send a cooler of vegis or grapefruit down the chain. Then we would get back halibut or cod on the return. It’s a deeply instilled tradition. Our friend Micheala lives in Anchorage and regularly blesses us with homemade sausages that her Polish-heritage family make every fall. They are delicious all by themselves, but I like to play around with them in recipes. I don’t normally write down what I’m doing, but this one took several tries to perfect. It is based upon a Dublin Coddle recipe that I tried and didn’t like. But the idea of it appealed to me, so I made changes and, voila, this is very flavorful. I like it. It’s gluten-free and dairy-free.