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St. Patrick’s Day Recipes: Corned Beef And Cabbage, Guinness Cupcakes, And More

By Nathan Francis
Published on: 14:05 PST, Mar 16, 2017

Looking for a great St. Patrick’s Day recipe to help celebrate the holiday? From corned beef and cabbage, to Irish stew, to Guinness cupcakes, you can find all the favorites right here.

The Irish are known for many things — great beer, some famous literature, music that is either light and lively, or slow and depressing (and not much in-between) — but they’re not exactly known for their cuisine. Boiled meat, salted potatoes, and simple vegetables are the crux of the Irish diet, and it’s not always an adventure for the palate.

But there are a handful of fantastic Irish recipes, including the timeless St. Patrick’s Day staple of corned beef and cabbage. So for those trying to find the best of Irish cuisine, here are the top St. Patrick’s Day recipes to make this year.

Corned beef and cabbage

This is actually a quintessentially American meal, one that has its roots in New York City’s immigrant neighborhoods during the 19th and early 20th centuries. Irish immigrants in these areas looked for “bacon joints” to simmer with their cabbage, Penn Live pointed out, but instead they found the corned beef being sold in the city’s Jewish delis.

The Irish immigrants found it to be a fantastic substitute, and the St. Patrick’s Day staple was born.

For those who have not cooked corned beef and cabbage before, they might be a bit surprised to find out there’s no corn involved at all. As Penn Live noted, corning is actually a form of curing that leaves the beef salty and soft.

“As for corning, it has nothing to do with corn and is a form of curing. The process originated in Anglo-Saxon times when meat was dry-cured in coarse ‘corns’ of salt, some the size of corn kernels, that were rubbed on the meat to prevent it from spoiling.”

This is one of the most simple St. Patrick’s Day recipes, and many supermarkets will even have a ready-made package of corned beef and cabbage plus potatoes and simple vegetables like carrots. But Penn Live has a simple recipe that won’t take too much effort or too much time.

And for all those college kids celebrating St. Patrick’s Day, USA Today has a corned beef and cabbage recipe you can actually make in your dorm room.

Irish stew recipe

If you’re not going to have corned beef and cabbage, then your next best bet is the traditional Irish stew, which made with lamb meat. It’s a hearty meal that goes great with a Guinness, and is also pretty easy to make.

The Food Network has a recipe that will take about three hours and require you to pick up some lamb’s neck, so you may need a trip to the butcher if your grocery store doesn’t carry it.

Soda bread recipe

This is another staple St. Patrick’s Day recipe and would go great with either meal. AllRecipes has an easy version that will take only about an hour to prepare and has a short list of ingredients that you probably have in the cupboard already — flour, white sugar, baking soda, baking powder, salt, margarine, an egg, and buttermilk.

Guinness cupcakes

Now that you’ve had your fill with a hearty Irish meal, it’s time to cap it off with a great dessert. Guinness cupcakes are a very popular St. Patrick’s Day recipe, and Food.com has a recipe that actually combines two of the most popular Irish drinks — Guinness and Bailey’s.

And even though the Irish and British don’t have the cleanest history, the BBC actually has a great Guinness cupcake recipe that will have you forgetting all your troubles.

But be warned for this recipe — it’s a decent amount of prep work, and there’s a good chance these cupcakes won’t survive long when you unleash them in the office or after your family dinner.

Anyone looking for more St. Patrick’s Day recipes can find a host of options from The Food Network.

[Featured Image by boblin/iStock]

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