Traditional Irish cuisine revolves heavily around potatoes and meat as key ingredients. Meals are warming, hearty and filling, and are often accompanied by freshly-baked soda bread. Seafood is also very popular, with mussels, cockles, prawns and chowder commonly found on restaurant menus. Irish desserts favour sweet, baked bread and cakes, which are often infused with guinness or whisky.
Here we’ve compiled a list of our must-try dishes for when you tour Ireland.
Breakfast:
Ulster fry (full Irish breakfast)
Soda bread (yeast-free bread)
Boxty (potato pancake)
Toast
Oatmeal
Mains:
Irish stew (lamb, potatoes and onions)
Coddle (sausages, bacon, onions and potatoes in broth)
Bangers and mash (sausages and mashed potatoes)
Irish nachos (potatoes topped with cheese and bacon)
Steak and Guinness pie
Corned beef
Shepherd’s pie
Cottage pie
Seafood:
Galway oysters
Dublin Bay prawns
Salmon
Cockles
Mussels
Seafood chowder
Sides:
Colcannon (mashed potatoes, kale, cabbage)
Champ (mashed potato, scallion)
Boiled bacon and cabbage
Irish brown bread
Guinness stout bread
Dessert:
Fifteens (biscuits, marshmallows and cherries baked into a slice)
Goody (bread boiled in milk, sugar and spices)
Barmbrack (fruit cake)
Guinness cake
Drinks:
Tea, Irish coffee, Miwadi, TK Red Lemonade, Club Rock Shandy
Beer:
Guinness stout, Kilkenny, Murphy’s stout, Smithwick’s.
Cider:
Magner’s, Bulmer’s, John Keppler’s, John J. Kelly’s.
Spirits:
Old Bushmill’s whisky, Tullamore Dew whisky, Jameson whisky, Bailey’s Irish Cream, Poitín.
Elle Conway studies Journalism in Canberra, Australia. Prior to university, she spent four years travelling, working and living abroad. She loves fantasy novels and spiced rum, and one day hopes to travel to Antarctica.
