Potato casserole with Mettwurst

Ingredients for 6 servings:

• 2 kg potatoes, mostly waxy
• 6 eggs
• 60 g flour
• 40 g potato starch
• 6 Mettwurst or Mettenden
• 200 g bacon, streaky, thin slices
• Salt
• pepper
• lard

Instructions

Working time approx. 30 minutes; Cooking/baking time approx. 1 hour; Total time approx. 1 hour 30 minutes

Also known as Potthucke

Grease a casserole dish (approx. 3 liters) well with the lard and line it with two-thirds of the bacon slices. I always buy pre-cut bacon (breakfast bacon); it’s easiest. Preheat the oven to 200°C. Wash and scrub the potatoes thoroughly. Don’t peel them, just cut out any dark or bad bits. Now finely grate the potatoes—I recommend using a food processor for this amount—and mix thoroughly with the eggs, flour, potato starch, salt, and pepper. 2 teaspoons of salt may not seem like much for this amount of potatoes, but since both the sausages and the bacon release some salt into the potato mixture, you should be careful with it. Pour a little of the potato mixture into the prepared dish. Then layer the sausages and the remaining potato mixture in the dish, making sure the sausages are covered with the potato mixture. Cover the dish with the remaining bacon slices and bake in the preheated oven for one hour, until nicely browned. Allow the Potthucke to cool slightly, then carefully turn it out onto a sufficiently large cutting board. Once completely cool, cut the Potthucke into slices about 1 cm thick and fry in lard until crispy brown on both sides. Traditionally, it is eaten with buttered black bread and beetroot or apple syrup. However, we like it best with homemade applesauce, and we can leave out the bread if we like. Tip: I always prepare the Potthucke the day before because it is best sliced ​​when completely cooled. Because of the baked-in sausages, it sometimes tends to fall apart a little when sliced, which is reduced by preparing it the day before. The success of the dish also depends somewhat on the type of potato.