What do people eat in Ireland?
Ireland runs on tea, bread and potatoes: toast or porridge in the morning, soup or a sandwich at lunch and a hot dinner around 18:00. The classics are the full Irish, Irish stew, coddle and a pint of Guinness.
Typical dishes and their calories
Breakfast
Weekdays are porridge, cereal or toast with a mug of tea. The full Irish is the weekend version: rashers, sausages, eggs, black and white pudding, tomato, beans and brown soda bread, about 900 kcal. In Northern Ireland it is the Ulster fry, with potato bread and soda farls fried in the same pan.
Lunch
Lunch is around 13:00 and is often soup of the day with brown bread, or a sandwich. Deli counters in shops sell the chicken fillet roll and the breakfast roll, a baguette filled with rashers, sausages and pudding. In many rural homes the hot meal used to be eaten in the middle of the day and was called dinner.
Dinner
The evening meal is usually between 18:00 and 19:00. Bacon and cabbage with potatoes, Irish stew of lamb or mutton with potatoes, onion and carrot, about 450 kcal a bowl, and Dublin coddle, sausages and bacon slowly cooked with potato and onion, are the traditional ones. Colcannon and champ, mash with kale, cabbage or spring onion, go with almost anything.
Starters
Seafood chowder with brown soda bread is the classic starter and often a meal on its own. Smoked salmon on brown bread, Galway oysters with a pint of Guinness, and boxty, a potato pancake of about 250 kcal, are on many menus.
Desserts
Apple tart with custard or cream is the home dessert, about 300 kcal a slice before the cream. Bread and butter pudding and trifle are common too. At Halloween people eat barmbrack, a fruit loaf with a ring baked inside, and whoever finds the ring is said to marry soon.
Drinks
The Irish are among the biggest tea drinkers per person in the world, strong and with milk, many times a day. Guinness has been brewed in Dublin since 1759, and a pint is about 200 kcal. Irish whiskey is the other national drink, and Irish coffee, whiskey, coffee, sugar and cream, was first served at Foynes airport in 1943.
Street food
The chipper is the local fish and chip shop: cod or a battered sausage with chips, salt and vinegar, often with curry sauce, and fish and chips comes to about 1,000 kcal. The spice bag, chips, crispy chicken, peppers and onion tossed in a spice mix, comes from Chinese takeaways and is a modern favourite.
Normal there, odd elsewhere
A crisp sandwich, Tayto cheese and onion crisps in buttered white bread, is a normal snack. Tea is offered the moment you sit down in someone's home, and you will be asked more than once. Many people still call lunch dinner and the evening meal tea, and red lemonade is a drink you find almost only in Ireland.