Recipe: Lancashire hotpot

Nine months ago, after a decade spent in London, I moved to Lancashire. Although I’m a northerner born and bred, I’m from the northeast, between Newcastle and Sunderland, so this was new territory for me. Keen to assimilate, I was ready to get stuck into some of the dishes the area is famous for: Eccles cakes, Manchester tart and Lancashire hotpot.

I was nervous. Regional dishes are integral to the character of a place, and often fiercely protected by those local to it. There are right ways and wrong ways to make them. As a newcomer, I didn’t want to get it wrong.

Lancashire hotpot is a one-pot dish of lamb and potatoes, greater than the sum of its parts, and one of which its people are justifiably proud. I fell down several rabbit holes in the pursuit of the ‘correct’ way of making it. Some use two layers of potatoes, one on the top and one on the bottom, others add turnips but omit carrots. Some swear by black pudding, others by oysters. Should you add more expensive chops or cuts to the mix, or lay them on top of the potatoes?

Of course, like most regional dishes, there isn’t a definitive version. Hotpot evolved gradually, informed by the needs of families and availability of ingredients. It is no surprise it bears strong similarities to Liverpudlian scouse and Irish stew. All use inexpensive cuts of mutton or lamb (or sometimes beef), chunky vegetables and potatoes to create a complete meal in one dish, and all are dishes which feed a hungry family with something hearty, comforting and cheap.

The name itself points to this what-is-to-hand approach and is thought to be a bastardisation of ‘hodge podge’. Food historian Adam Balic has traced the name, finding a reference in Sir Kenelm Digby’s 1677 The Closet Opened to the ‘Queen Mothers Hotchpot of Mutton’; and there is a recipe for neck of mutton, onion, carrot, peas, cauliflower and lettuce in Mrs Beeton’s Cookery Book under the name ‘Hotch Potch’ in 1861.