10 Jaw-Dropping Irish Dishes You Need to Try
The Irish have a great heritage of wonderful dishes you should try whenever you visit a pub or restaurant. There are too many to count, but for our purposes today, let’s look at 10 of the best Irish meals. Most of these are available when you visit McGrath’s for brunch, lunch, or dinner.
10 Jaw-Dropping Irish Dishes
- Bacon & Cabbage
- Cabbage is a huge staple for Irish meals, and bacon has always been the best item to pair with it. As a light breakfast, you can’t go wrong joining it with our Traditional Tea Service, consisting of either Earl Grey, Lemongrass, or Green Tea.
- Traditional Irish Breakfast
- If you stop by for Brunch, you won’t regret it when you try our Traditional Irish Breakfast. It comes with fried eggs, black and white pudding, home fries, rasher, and tomato.
- Soda Bread & Jam
- Soda bread is about as traditional as you get, with countless ways to prepare it. Some folks make it with honey, sugar, dried fruits, bran and oats, seeds, and even Guinness. The core ingredients are baking soda mixed with buttermilk, often served with a dollop of jam. We include this with our Irish Beef Stew.
- Irish Porridge
- Porridge is a simple dish, but another open to a plethora of ingredient variations. The healthiest approach would be to mix in nuts and fruits, while other bold folks spike it with a little Irish whiskey.
- Shepherd’s Pie
- We offer three traditional Irish pies: Shepherd’s Pie, Steak & Ale Pie, and Chicken Pot Pie. Shepherd’s pie gives you the rare opportunity to enjoy lamb accompanied with potato, peas, carrots, onions, and corn.
- Irish Beef Stew
- This is our family-favorite menu item, featuring hearty chunks of beef, potatoes, carrots, and Irish broth. Again, this comes with delicious soda bread.
- Coddle
- Coddle is like the working man’s version of stew. During certain periods of Irish history, meat was less available, so families would improvise with a medley or coddle of ingredients. Like stew, it involves a slow simmering of items like sausage, bacon rashers, sliced potatoes, and onions.
- Colcannon
- Colcannon is another potato-based dish you would combine with kale, cabbage, butter, cream, or onions. Historically, this became popular in the late middle ages when potatoes were abundant.
- Boxty
- Here’s one last potato item. Boxty is a diced or grated version, usually seasoned with salt and flour before being boiled and then fried in butter. It goes great with bacon, eggs, pastry, or seafood.
- Scotch Egg
- Who said eggs are only for breakfast? That’s not the case for us at all. This is a dinner favorite where we take a soft-boiled egg and adorn it with other ingredients, particularly pale ale honey mustard.
Again, we have a pretty extensive menu, which covers every food group, all within a traditional Irish framework. We hope you’ll visit us to try a couple of these hearty meals sometime.
McGrath’s Irish Ale House serves outstanding Irish food and drinks for our patrons in Lakewood Ranch, FL. We’re a family restaurant with something for everybody. Call us with questions, comments, or suggestions at 941-210-4398.