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Full breakfast
The full Irish
Rashers, sausages, eggs, black and white pudding, grilled tomato and mushrooms, with toast or soda bread and a strong pot of tea. Rashers are back bacon, meatier than American strips, and the white pudding, a pork and oatmeal sausage with no blood in it, is the part visitors go home talking about. At home the trick is timing rather than skill: get the puddings and sausages going low and slow, then do the eggs last so nothing sits waiting. It is a weekend breakfast or a hangover cure, not a Tuesday habit.
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Full breakfast
The Ulster fry
Northern Ireland's version of the cooked breakfast earns its own entry because of the bread. Alongside the sausages, bacon, eggs, tomato and black pudding come soda farls and potato bread, both fried in the pan until crisp and golden. Potato farls are a griddle bread of cooked potato, flour and buttermilk, so they are also the best possible use for last night's leftover mashed potatoes. If you only fry one extra thing this weekend, make it a potato farl.
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Boxty
A potato pancake that often uses potato twice, raw and grated plus cooked and mashed, bound with flour and milk or buttermilk and fried on a griddle or pan. The raw potato gives a lacy, crisp edge and the mash keeps the middle soft, which is the whole point. Boxty belongs to the north midlands and south Ulster, Leitrim, Cavan and Fermanagh especially, where an old rhyme warned that a girl who could not make boxty would never get a man. Squeeze the grated potato hard in a clean towel before mixing, or it will never crisp. Serve it with eggs and bacon, or wrapped around a stew if you want to annoy a purist.
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Coddle
Dublin's supper dish: pork sausages, rashers or leftover bacon, sliced potatoes and onions, layered in a pot with parsley and simmered gently for a long time. It has been cooked in Ireland since the 18th century, and traditionally nothing gets browned first, so the sausages come out pale. That is not a mistake, though plenty of modern cooks give them a quick fry for color and nobody calls the police. It is cheap, forgiving and almost impossible to ruin, which makes it ideal for a cold night when you cannot face real cooking. Soda bread on the side is not optional.
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Bacon and cabbage
This, not corned beef, is the boiled dinner Ireland actually sits down to. A piece of salted pork is boiled until tender, the cabbage goes into the same pot for the last few minutes to soak up the salty stock, and the plate is finished with floury potatoes and a white parsley sauce. Skip the sauce and you have missed the point. Soak the bacon first if it is very salty, and do not drown the cabbage: it should still have some bite. Leftovers make a fine sandwich the next day.
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Colcannon
Buttery mashed potato folded through with cooked kale or cabbage, often with scallions and a pool of melting butter in the middle. It is the natural partner for a slice of boiled bacon or a couple of good sausages. Colcannon also belongs to Halloween night: a wedding ring wrapped in paper was hidden in the pot, and whoever found it was meant to marry within the year. Cook the greens separately and squeeze them dry, or the mash turns watery. Make extra, because leftover colcannon fried in a pan the next morning is a treat of its own.
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Champ (food)
Colcannon's simpler cousin and the Northern Irish favorite: floury potatoes mashed with hot milk that has been infused with chopped scallions, served in a mound with a well of butter melting in the center. You eat from the outside in, dipping each forkful into the butter. It takes ten minutes more than plain mash and tastes like you tried far harder. It sits happily beside sausages, a piece of fish or a slice of boiled ham, and it is the dish to make first if you are new to Irish cooking.
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Chowder
Irish seafood chowder
Not the clam chowder of New England. The Irish pub version is a creamy broth packed with chunks of fish, often smoked haddock, cod or salmon, with mussels or shrimp and soft vegetables, and it comes with a thick slice of buttered brown bread. Order it in a seafood pub on the west coast and lunch is taken care of. At home the rule is to cook the fish for minutes, not hours: build the base first, then add the seafood right at the end so it stays tender. A little smoked fish makes all the difference.
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Soda bread
Irish soda bread, brown and white
Flour, baking soda, salt and buttermilk, and that is genuinely it. The soda does the rising instead of yeast, so there is no kneading and no waiting for dough to rise: it is the quickest loaf you will ever bake. The whole wheat version is called brown bread in the south and wheaten bread in Northern Ireland, and it is the slice you want with chowder, smoked salmon or a fry. White soda bread is softer and better for toast. Mix lightly and quickly, because overworked dough bakes heavy.
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Blaa
A soft, floury white bread roll from Waterford, with a history traced back to Huguenot refugees in the late 17th century. Since 2013 the name Waterford blaa has been protected by the European Union, so only bakers in County Waterford and a small adjoining corner of south Kilkenny can use it. Locals eat it before midday, split and filled with butter, a rasher or a fried egg; the famous local version is the blaa and red lead, stuffed with bright red Ballybeg ham. Visitors should go and get one at the source. Home bakers can make a soft white roll in the same spirit, but cannot call it a Waterford blaa.
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Barmbrack
A speckled fruit loaf, from the Irish bairín breac, heavy with raisins, golden raisins and candied peel that have soaked overnight in cold tea. It is the bread of Halloween, when a ring and other charms were baked inside to tell fortunes: find the ring and a wedding was on its way. The rest of the year it is simply the best thing to toast and butter with a cup of tea. The overnight tea soak is the step people skip and regret, because it is what keeps the loaf moist. If you hide a charm, wrap it well and tell everyone at the table.
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Spiced beef
Cork spiced beef
Cork's Christmas centerpiece: beef cured in a brine of salt and spices, a habit that goes back to the city's days as a busy port shipping preserved beef. Each butcher guards their own spice mix, and the English Market's counters are the place to buy it in December. To cook it, bring it to a boil, simmer gently, then let it cool in its own liquid so it soaks the spices back up. Served cold and sliced thin, it turns a Christmas leftovers sandwich into the best meal of the week. If corned beef is your idea of Irish beef, start here instead.
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Apple cake
Irish apple cake
A homely bake that comes in two styles: one closer to a pie, with sliced apples enclosed in a soft, scone-like dough, and one where apple pieces are folded through a thick cake batter. Both are at their best with Bramley apples, whose sharpness cuts through the sugar and whose flesh softens readily in the oven. Serve it warm or at room temperature with custard sauce or cream. Outside Ireland and Britain, where Bramleys are hard to find, a tart green apple such as Granny Smith is the usual stand-in. It is easier than a tart and more forgiving than a crumble.
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Spice bag
The newest dish here, and proof that Irish food did not stop in the 1800s. Crispy fried chicken, fries, red and green peppers, onions and chili, all tossed in spice and served in a paper bag, often with curry sauce on the side. The best-known account traces it to the Sunflower Chinese restaurant in Templeogue, Dublin, around late 2008 or early 2009, though others say it grew out of older takeout combinations. Either way it spread well beyond Dublin, Waterford chippers included, and was voted Ireland's favorite takeaway food in the 2017 Just Eat awards. At home it is a fake-takeout night: fry the chicken and fries well, then toss everything hot in the seasoning so it clings.
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