St. Patrick’s Day is usually a feast day where you eat traditional Irish fare. The following is a look at some easy St. Patrick’s Day recipes for Steel Cut Oatmeal, Colcannon, Corned beef and cabbage, and soda bread, all common foods in Ireland.
Steel Cut Oatmeal:
The Irish introduced oatmeal to America.
Ingredients:
1 cup steel cut Oats
1.5 cups water
.5 cup milk
2 tb sugar
1 tb cinnamon
Put water in a sauce pan. Bring water to a boil, dump in all other ingredients, turn down, and let simmer until oats are soft. The steel cut oats are thicker and chewier than rolled oats, and make for a hearty breakfast to start the day off with.
Colcannon
Potatoes are a staple in the Irish diet, and thus variations on how to serve them have been derived.
Ingredients:
4 large potatoes
1 clove garlic
1 cup chopped kale
1 cup chopped cabbage
Salt and pepper, to taste
Directions: Chop up potatoes and bring to a boil. Boil until softened. Put in big bowl and mash. While mashing potatoes, blanch or steam, or boil the cabbage and kale. Mix into mashed potatoes with garlic clove, and a little salt and pepper for flavoring.
Corned beef and cabbage
This was a traditional fare eaten to flavor cabbage which was abundant in Ireland.
Ingredients
4 slices bacon
4 tablespoons butter
1 head green cabbage, chopped
water
Salt and pepper, to taste
1 can corned beef
Directions: Cook the bacon until almost crisp. Then take it out of the pan, and add your butter to your bacon grease. Stir in cabbage, and add 1/3 cup water, and salt and peper to taste. Simmer on medium heat (covered) for ten minutes. Chop bacon up, open the can of corned beef. Remove lid and sprinkle in the mead, cook a few more minutes, stir and serve. If the cabbage seems to be drying out while cooking, be sure you add more water. But not too much, just enough to keep things moist.
Irish Soda Bread:
Most Irish homes in the earlier days did not have ovens, just open hearths, and this was the bread they made over it.
Ingredients
2 cups whole-wheat flour
2 cups all-purpose flour
Flour for dusting
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
2 1/4 cups buttermilk
Directions
Preheat oven to 450 degrees F. Coat a baking sheet with cooking spray and sprinkle with a little flour.
Mix dry ingredients in a large bowl. Pour the buttermilk into the center of the bowl, and stir in circle until the flour is incorporated. Dough should be soft but not too wet or sticky. Dump it from bowl onto a well floured counter top. Use floured hands to shape dough gently into a rounded shape, then flip over and flatten it some so it is about 2 inches thick. Put on baking sheet, make a cross over the top, and bake for 20 mins. Then, reduce temp to 400 and bake until brown, which should be 30-35 more minutes. Cool before eating (at least 30 mins).