you're making mealtime meaningful.
When winter hits hard sometimes the only way to cope is with some intensely comforting food, warm from the oven and loaded with tried-and-true flavors. This recipe for Hot Lightning (also known as Hete Bliksem) comes from the Netherlands, where it’s served as a balm to the chills of the colder months. This fabulously hearty dish is made from produce that keeps well into the winter, making it a staple of Dutch cooking that’s enjoyed several ways. Today, we’re making an easy version that relies on the sweetness of apples and the richness of bacon.
This dish is not unrelated to Heaven and Earth, a German dish that combines apples and potatoes. In this version we’re starting with some crispy bacon, fried in an oven-safe pan. Then add in some halved baby potatoes and crisp those up as well. It’s important to get them a bit browned as it provides some contrast to the soft fruit in this dish.
The fruit here is some chopped Granny Smith apples and some pears. There’s no need to peel them as they will get cooked down in the oven. For the seasoning it’s simple: just salt, pepper, and some fresh thyme.
After everything has been cooked together on the stove it’s time to pop the lid on and bake it all together. This finishes cooking the potatoes so they are nice and tender. The heat turns the fruit into a sweet, melted background for the flavor of the bacon and potatoes to shine. Apples and pork go famously well together so it’s no surprise that they work in this dish so harmoniously.
The name is said to come from the fact that the apples cook down to be super hot in the oven and can burn your tongue if you don’t wait for them to cool.
Since the fruit is softened by the baking and you can enhance that by blitzing the whole thing with a stick blender or using a potato masher on it. When mashed it’s called stamppot, another delicious way to enjoy this recipe.
I like keeping some of the texture in this dish, but it’s good when mashed as well. You can also add some onions, carrots, turnips, rutabaga, or other roots veggies to the pot since they are traditional in many Dutch stamppot recipes.
This wonderful main dish has some sweetness from the fruit, some smokiness from the bacon, and the familiar flavor of potatoes to round it all out. Hot Lightning is great for cold days, but honestly it makes a great main just about anytime you get a hankering for a comforting meal.
Hot Lightning
Yield(s): Serves 4
10m prep time
50m cook time
476 calories
Diet: Gluten-Free
you're making mealtime meaningful.
Ingredients
- 1 tablespoon butter
- 1 lb bacon, chopped into small pieces
- 2 lbs baby potatoes, cut into halves
- 2 Granny Smith apples, roughly chopped
- 2 firm pears, chopped
- salt and pepper to taste
- 1 tablespoon honey or maple syrup
- leaves from 2 thyme sprigs
Preparation
- Preheat oven to 350˚F. Melt butter in oven-safe stockpot or large skillet over medium-high. Add bacon and reduce heat to medium. Cook for 8 minutes or until bacon is beginning to crisp. Add potatoes and cook for 10 minutes or until they begin to brown. Add remaining ingredients to pan and cook for 2 minutes more.
- Stir well and cover with lid. Carefully transfer to oven. Bake for 30 minutes or until potatoes are fork tender, stirring at least once. If mixture becomes dry during baking add a splash of water or apple cider vinegar to the pan and stir.
- Serve piping hot with bread and/or cheese and enjoy.
Recipe adapted from The Guardian.