Today we’re going to talk about what we can learn from Ireland, the green Emerald Isle, about food, dining, nutrition, and cooking. Hopefully you can become inspired and get some good ideas from this episode. Ireland’s food and dining culture has changed a lot over the last few decades. It used to be very simple, hearty fare, and that’s the sort of food we’re going to be looking at. Today, it’s fancier in a lot of ways with all the restaurants opening up and et cetera. We are going to look at traditional Irish food, however.
The first point is farm to table. In Ireland, there are a lot of green fields, and a lot of sheep and cows grazing out in the wild. This makes very healthy meat. There’s a mild climate and green landscapes, and they produce lots of grass-fed beef and lamb. There’s also high-quality, raw dairy like butter and cheese, and a lot of fresh seafood like oysters, mussels, and salmon. There’s a lot of seasonal produce.
Ireland is very good at using local and seasonal ingredients in their food, especially in the past with the way people used to live. It’s a little bit harder these days, but finding a good farmer’s market is a great way to do these things. If you live in a city, find the place with the most natural, the most grass-fed, and the most seasonal food. See if you can find most of what you need there.
Ireland is also very traditional. They have foods and dishes that are well known around the world, and that people love to cook. They’re very high in comfort food – we’ll talk more about that in a moment. Irish stew is an amazing stew with hearty potatoes, carrots, and gravy.
The Irish love to make Irish soda bread. I also enjoy making this because it’s one of the easiest breads you can make. Basically, it uses baking soda instead of yeast. We make a spelt version of it, though you can just do a normal wheat version. Often it has buttermilk. After you make the dough, you don’t even need to leave it. You just mix up the dough, put it in a pile on a baking tray, and bake it. It’s so delicious! You can put butter and jam on the pieces.
Here are some other things that the Irish cook often. Irish Coddle is a slow cooked stew that originated in Dublin. It has layers of pork sausages and bacon with potatoes and onions. It’s a hearty comfort food.
Boxty is a potato pancake made with mixed raw grated potatoes and cooked mashed potatoes. This gives it a crispy outside and a soft, fluffy inside. It’s very yummy as a side dish. Colcannon is mashed potatoes mixed with kale or cabbage, and then butter, milk, and onions are added. It’s another yummy side dish.
So, comfort food is a huge part of Irish cuisine and Irish tradition. Because it’s cold and raining a lot, they really love their comfort food. To them, it’s not indulgent; it’s nourishing. It was developed to sustain people through hard work in the freezing cold climate. They often make stews rich in root vegetables like carrots and potatoes. They do thick soups, potato based dishes, homemade breads, and porridges with oats.
My next point is that hospitality is a core value in Ireland. It’s very important to them. Meals are less about the food, and more about the company, which is why comfort food fits in so well. It’s kind of woven into their culture. Guests are welcomed with generosity, and meals are relaxed – not fancy and pretentious, but simple, delicious, and nutritious. The priority is their conversation, their connection, and their comfort.
This influences the kind of food that is made, and I think we can learn from that. Sometimes I want to make really fancy things when we have guests, but what really counts is good, hearty, fare that fills us up, and helps us to have good conversation and good fellowship. I mustn’t worry too much about making it perfect.
In the same way, they use the local pub as their cultural hub, often getting together there as well as at home. There they have slow, relaxed meals that are definitely hearty fare – things like chowder, pies, or sandwiches. There’ll be music playing, and it’s a great way to connect, especially when it’s cold and raining outside a lot of the time.
They really practice simplicity in their meals. They have short ingredient lists. For example, a stew can be so delicious with just some meat, potatoes, carrots, and a bit of broth and seasoning. That’s all you need. There’s also their mashed potato with cabbage in it – just two ingredients and a few seasonings. So, simplicity works great.
They also like to cook whole, minimally processed ingredients. Again, they have their free range meat, seasonal vegetables like root vegetables and cabbage, a little butter, plain fresh fish with lemon, boiled potatoes with herbs, and homemade soups made using just root vegetables and broth.
I think those soups can be some of the most delicious. We like to make butternut soup by just putting butternut in the pot, adding some nice beef or chicken broth, and a little bit of salt. That’s all you need. You just cook it up and blend it, and it’s delicious. We also make a cauliflower soup by putting the cauliflower into the pot with a little bit of broth, some water, a bit of salt, and then a little bit of cream and cheese at the end. Again, it’s delicious, easy, simple, and nourishing.
Now let’s talk about seasonal eating. I’ve mentioned that before. It supports nutrition because things are higher in nutrition when they’re in season. It’s like grass-fed meats – those are also higher in nutrients. In the summer they eat more berries and light fish dishes. In the autumn, they use more apples, wild mushrooms, and grains. In the spring it’s fresh greens and lamb, and in the winter, they have hearty soups, stews, potatoes, cabbage, turnips, and et cetera. When the foods are picked; when they’re most ripe, they have better taste and higher nutrition levels.
I mentioned oats before. Those are a big part of the diet in Ireland. They were a staple for the farming families for hundreds of years, and also for roaming warriors. This was because it can be made into a solid piece which they could take along in their pocket and nibble on. Today, porridges are quite popular.
The balance to their meals comes naturally. Traditional Irish meals tend to be well-rounded without taking too much planning. They have good protein – the lamb, the beef, the seafood, and the dairy, good carbohydrates – the potatoes, the root vegetables, the oats, and the bread, and then good fiber and vegetable sides like cabbage, carrots, leeks, onions, and et cetera. Even in their desserts like apple cake or rhubarb tart, they often emphasize the fruit more than the cream or the frosting. That’s a healthier kind of dessert.
So, now I’m going to talk about a meal planning option for making some Irish staples. This would mean making things in advance in batches so that you have them when you need them. Firstly, you need to make three main batches of food. The first batch would be a big pot of Irish stew, the second batch would be the root vegetable soup, and the third batch the roasted potatoes, et cetera. Then you can do quick items on the day you eat those to add to them.
Let’s talk about each of those in more detail. Firstly, there’s the Irish stew. That would be your protein, your vegetables, and your broth base. This becomes your stew or pie filling, something to use as a hash, or for lunches, et cetera. You could use some cheap beef or lamb cuts, and add potatoes, carrots, onions, parsley, salt and pepper, and then stock or water. Simmer that, or put it in the crockpot – that also works great. In the crockpot, it usually takes four hours on high or six to eight hours on low. You can google a traditional Irish stew recipe in the crockpot. There are lots of good options out there.
On the same day, or a different day, you could do your soups. You can do a potato and leek soup, or a cauliflower and cheese soup, or a carrot and parsnip one, et cetera. All you need is one and a half to two kilos of veg – that’s four to five pounds of veg – with some stock or some broth. Then you can either blend it all, or you can blend half and leave the rest chunky.
You can even mix the vegetables, or have a few different soups going. Then you can put them in your fridge or freezer. If you feel like it’ll work add some cream at the end. The butternut soup doesn’t really need that, but broccoli and cauliflower soups are nice with cream. You can even add a bit of cheese and blend it with that. Remember to taste and salt it at the end because often you need to add a little bit more salt just before it’s finished.
The third batch would be your sides. Again, you can make them on the same day, or a different day to keep in your fridge. You could make roast potatoes with cabbage. All you need is a head of cabbage, a couple of kilos of potatoes, which is four pounds, and perhaps some onion, salt, and pepper. Put them on a baking tray, and put oil, salt, and pepper on top, and roast them in the oven until they’re golden. It’s good to cut them quite small when you do this so that the outside doesn’t burn before the inside is cooked. Then you have some great side vegetables.
So, having those three things ready really helps for the week. Then you can have a soup with some Irish soda bread on one day. You can have a stew for dinner. For breakfast, you can make porridge from oats. Another day, you can do another soup, or add one of your side veg to some meat that you cook in the crockpot. Just mix and match those foods.
Again, the emphasis is on simple food, hearty comfort food. You can slow-cook meat in the crockpot, making it really tender, and mix that with the potatoes and carrots. Make some hearty soups with some good broth for great nutrition. Simple food like that can be so nourishing.
Sometimes we get stuck in a rut of eating – we’ve lately had a lot of lasagna, pies, and other pre-cooked food, and it doesn’t feel like it’s as nourishing as the broth, meat, and vegetables. I want to focus on that for a while. I hope you’re inspired and have a few ideas that you can implement.
