Eintopf (German one pot stew)

Following a chat about food with two German chums, Helge and Lasse, we thought we should try making Eintopf  in the Cook Japan rice cooker:

For those new to this dish, that includes Cook Japan until 48-hours ago, Eintopf means literally ?one pot? and is a traditional type of German stew which can consist of a great number of different ingredients. Technically, the term refers to a way of cooking all ingredients in one pot, not to any specific recipe.
Not knowing quite where to start we therefore followed Lasse?s lead and opted for the following recipe which we cooked with the ?soup? mode (plus a bit of braising)?
?first up braise some bacon and German sausage in the rice cooker, once browned put this to one side, switch to ?soup? and get on with the liquid component of dinner.  In this case, we used peas, leeks, carrots, celery, potatoes, bay leaf, onion, some bouillon and seasoning.  Once the soup was underway, the sausages and bacon were re-added to the rice cooker and left to cook?

Once cooked the dish sits quite happily on ?keep warm? intensifying flavours until ready to be devoured by very cold hordes at dinner time?and the best thing is there just enough for a very small cold horder to eat some more tomorrow!

As with many great dishes this is Eintopf is about using ingredients to hand rather than rigidly sticking to a recipe, this was our first experiment and according to our German friends not a bad start either.
For more information visit: www.cookjapan.co.uk