15 Traditional Irish Dishes Everyone Needs To Try At Least Once

Ireland and Northern Ireland have long relied on being self-sustaining, with food that needed to be filling, functional, and plentiful. Historically, much of the country worked outdoors doing heavy labor and needed food that was nutrient-dense and hardy enough to keep them going. Large families meant more hands to help but also more mouths to feed. Fishing and farming enabled many families to provide something for their loved ones to eat, and neighbors could trade resources. Like many places, Ireland still holds onto its traditional recipes, reflecting those values.

You'll definitely notice certain foods making an appearance in more than one dish — potatoes, cabbage, mutton (or lamb), seafood, pork, and carrots were all plentiful and made their mark on the nation's culinary identity. These traditional recipes are still enjoyed, with the occasional tweak to modernize them, as a way to celebrate the foods many Irish people grew up with. Read on to discover some of these well-loved dishes you have to try at least once.

You've likely heard of blood sausage but might not know it by its other name, black pudding. It's called pudding because it's boiled or steamed in a cloth. It's the pudding known as a sweet dessert in North America — these sausages are cooked in animal intestines. Originally, it was a perfect way to use up farm by-products such as pork or beef fat and blood; black puddings also made a filling addition to pre-workday breakfast. The addition of oatmeal and barley helped to stretch the ingredients as well as make it even heartier. Today, it's a staple item in any full Irish breakfast.

But what about white pudding versus black pudding? It's really just the ingredients used. White pudding is also a grain-based sausage and contains nearly everything else that the black variety does, with the exception of blood. This makes a difference in the nutrition of the puddings, as blood contains quite a bit of iron. However, it also imparts a metallic taste that some may find unappealing.

With a recipe that is very close to traditional Irish soda bread, boxty is another staple Irish food that is made with few ingredients that were easy enough to find. Potatoes, baking soda, buttermilk, and flour (soda bread eschews potato but adds a dash of salt) come together to make a different type of bread that's actually more like a potato pancake, although dumplings are a common variation, too. Boxty is primarily made of grated potatoes (with the remaining ingredients in there just to hold everything together), unlike potato farls which are made with mashed.

Before you start whipping up the Irish potato pancakes that go with everything, make sure you've got the right ingredients. You're going to need starchy potatoes, like russets, so they really soak up the buttermilk and stay together in the pan. Speaking of the pan, there's an old rhyme about making boxty, "Boxty in the griddle, boxty in the pan, if you can't make boxty, you'll never get a man." Take that as you will, potato lovers.

Like barmbrack, colcannon is a year-round comestible that's also a simple Irish dish traditionally eaten on Halloween. October 31st has long been considered the one day of the year when spirits could most easily pass through the veil between our worlds. To lure loved ones back home, people prepared all the best foods for Samhain (Halloween) including this comforting dish of mashed potatoes, cabbage, cream, and loads of butter. No cabbage? Other sturdy greens, like kale, are acceptable substitutions, as in this delicious recipe.

If you're not a fan of greens (or you just don't have any), make champ instead. While it used to be made with stinging nettle, champ (or "poundies") is most often made with potatoes, cream, loads of butter, and just a little spring onion for greenery. Both dishes are served mounded on the plate with a small depression on top, sort of like a potato volcano. This depression is used to hold as much butter as possible, making both of these dishes a seriously good way to get your fill of dairy goodness.

Another potato dish? You bet. Spuds have long been an integral part of Ireland's diet and culture for a number of reasons besides their crave-worthy taste. According to Britannica, potatoes are easy to grow in (often poor) Irish soil but also store well for the long term and provide decent, hardy nutrition. They can also be prepared in myriad ways that are, let's face it, incredibly delicious. And farls are just another gleaming example of the potato's versatility.

Similar to boxty, farls are a form of potato pancake that borders on a type of bread, depending on the amount of flour in the recipe. Less flour means a denser and moister farl; add more flour, and you'll get something similar to a scone. Made with mashed potatoes, rather than grated, they are shaped into a flat disc and scored into quarters before baking (although store-bought farls are often rectangular shaped). It's one of the amazing ways to use leftover mashed potatoes if that's something that ever happens to you (it never happens to us, either).

The original version of this snack might not be that appealing to someone who is looking for an exciting edible, but most children or anyone unwell in Ireland will have had their fair share of goody. Slices of plain white bread, soaked and boiled in milk (or weak tea if you were lucky!), with the occasional addition of sugar and spices was the original recipe for this little bit of soggy sustenance. Times have changed, however, and goody can now be seen as being a little closer to bread pudding than what it once was. Recent additions of cocoa powder and chocolate chips have brought it back to mainstream audiences, rather than just being used to settle an upset stomach.

Also used to celebrate St. John's Eve (marking the beginning of summer), a heartier version is cooked in one large pot over a bonfire. If you plan on helping yourself to the communal goody, make sure to bring your own bowl and spoon.

Irish stew is truly one of the first foods that come to mind when thinking of Ireland. Now made with lamb that is slow-cooked until meltingly tender, the original recipe relied on mutton instead. Ireland has a long history of sheep farming, so recipes using mutton prevailed, rather than beef. For today's home cooks that don't live on a sheep farm or have access to fresh mutton, lamb is an acceptable substitution that won't take nearly as long to cook, either.

Adding potatoes, onions, garlic, Worcestershire sauce, and not much else, the resulting dish is a recipe that you can make any time you're craving a little bit of home-style contentment. The choice of broth depends on your preferences — the beef broth is most often used now because of convenience, but if you have the option to boil down your lamb bones and make stock yourself, you can always give that a try. Although, we definitely think that adding a healthy pour of Guinness will improve any broth that you choose.

Shepherd's pie is standard comfort food, made with ground lamb, mashed potatoes, and whatever veggies you prefer — most often peas, carrots, or corn. If you were expecting us to tell you that it had ground beef, that's understandable. The North American version is most often made with beef because we eat far more beef than lamb. In the UK, it's only ever called shepherd's pie when it's made with lamb. When it's made with beef, it's actually a cottage pie because, during the 18th century, it was eaten by peasants who mostly lived in cottages, (via Jamie Oliver).

Minced or ground lamb is sautéed with a little onion and chopped vegetables, then spread into a casserole dish. Cover it with a thick layer of mashed potatoes, pop it into the oven, and you're done. It's simple, hearty, and relies on ingredients that most people have on hand, especially in farming communities. The variations that sound pretty delicious include adding a sprinkle of cheese or breadcrumbs over the top of the mashed potatoes before cooking.