Experience the warmth of potée, a beloved classic French stew. This traditional dish features hearty pork, often shoulder or knuckles, simmered with seasonal vegetables like carrots, leeks, turnips, and sometimes cabbage in a pot.
The result is a nourishing and flavorful meal, served in layers: the soup first, followed by vegetables and tender meat on top. Ideal for winter, potée is both economical and satisfying, celebrating the essence of French cuisine with its simple, comforting ingredients.
The traditional Auvergne region hotpot recipe is adapted with sausage. Here is my quick and easy recipe for a delicious family dish.
This is not exactly the traditional potée recipe because there are not one but several potée hotpot recipes. Depending on the regions of France and local or family traditions, the specificities of the recipe change.
Today, I offer you my version of this French hotpot recipe, as I have always cooked it: it has a big influence from the Auvergne potée with the sausage that was an emblem of my childhood, the Morteau sausage. I sometimes replace the Morteau sausage with Montbéliard sausages, so we are using products that are traditional to a region of France called Franche-Comté, which is why I wouldn’t dare call my potée an Auvergne potée.
Origin of the French hotpot and its culinary tradition
The word potée comes from the container in which the dish is cooked. The pot, the cooking container, thus gives its name to the contents of the cooking dish. Today, the French hotpot, potée, refers to a meat dish with vegetables cooked in broth; essentially, it resembles a stew.
Note that in France, we use the expression “a potée of…” to designate a large quantity of. Undoubtedly, stews are often cooked for family portions, not small individual dishes.
Which meat to choose for your French hotpot?
I use half-salted pork shoulder. As you may have read in some recipes, it is not necessary to desalinate it in water. If you do choose to do so, I recommend putting the semi-salted meat in cold water and leaving it for at least an hour, then discarding the water.
For the meat, you can mix half-salted breast and shoulder.
Start the cooking on hot or cold?
Both are possible, but I highly recommend putting the meat in hot water. First, take the meat out of the refrigerator so that it is at room temperature. Boil a large volume of water without salt. You can add a bouquet garni, peppercorns, coriander seeds, or juniper berries… Then, put the meat in boiling water and lower the heat a little.
If you start with cold water, add your semi-salted meat, and then start to heat it, you will need to skim a lot. Chef Jean-François Trap even recommends discarding this water during such cooking (start cold, skim off when the water is simmering, discard it, and continue cooking with clear water).
I admit I tend to follow my butcher’s recommendations and the instructions I learned during my cooking courses.
Potée French Pork and Vegetables Stew
Ingredients
- 1 kilo pork shoulder (half-salted)
- 1 slice bacon
- 1 Morteau sausage or 2 Montbéliard sausages
- 6 carottes
- 6 leeks
- 6 small turnips
- 6 potatoes
- 3 onions
- 1/2 cabbage
- 2 garlic cloves
- 1 bouquet garni
Instructions
Cook the meat
- Remove the meat from the refrigerator let is reach room temperature.
- Take the largest pot or casserole you have and fill it at least halfway with water. Boil the water.
- Once the water is boiling, add the meat and the thick slice of bacon, reduce the heat and cook at a low simmer. Skim if necessary. The stew will cook for around 2.5 hours, more or less depending on the strength of your fire. Cook over medium heat and add the vegetables and sausage gradually.
Prepare the vegetables
- Meanwhile, peel and cut all the vegetables except the potatoes. Peel the carrots, turnips and onions, leave them whole. Peel the garlic, leave the cloves whole. Rinse the leeks and cut large sections of white and beginning of green, more or less identical to the size of your carrots.
- After about 30 minutes of cooking the meat, add the vegetables (carrot, turnip, onion) and cook over medium heat.
- 1 hour later add the leeks (if you add them too soon they will completely melt in the broth). Also add the Morteau sausage.
Prepare the vegetables which are added at the end of cooking
- For the cabbage, cut two quarters and rinse. Bring a large pot of salted water to boil and blanch the cabbage for 5 minutes before draining. You will add the blanched cabbage at the end of cooking.
- Peel the potatoes, leave them whole or if they are very large, cut them in half and reserve them in a bowl of water.
- 30 minutes before the end add the potatoes. Then 15 minutes before the end add the cabbage leaves.
Serve
- Serve with the broth which is delicious on its own or use deep plates by pouring the broth over the vegetables and meat.