Mashed potatoes whipped with a green onion infused milk.
Irish Champ Potatoes
Unless Mama Nature intended they be green by her own hand, I'm not big on green colored food for St. Patrick's Day.
Don't get me wrong - I do think it's fun, especially if you have children who can appreciate a quirky green meal, or maybe even a spouse who won't mind the ribbing from their workmates. I love the color green, but I'm not generally too big on using green dye to color things green either.
Well... there might be an exception or two, but essentially my menu of St. Patrick's Day meal ideas is more a mix of traditional Irish food, with Irish-American food, and, well... just good ole regular food that might fit the theme.
I've got a meat and potatoes eatin' man living in my house, so potatoes are always a staple under this roof, and I love having a variety of ways to serve them. Darina Allen, in her book, Traditional Irish Cooking (#ad), and whose method I used below, notes that potatoes, a definite staple in the Irish home, were often cooked in very large quantities, and it was the job of the man of the house to beat them smooth, usually with a heavy, wooden pestle called a beetle.
As he beat the pot of potatoes, the lady of the house would add in the milk and whatever else was to be included, often cabbage, green onions, fresh chopped parsley, chives, or fresh peas, when in season.
Oddly enough, despite having seven years on him, it was always the job of my little brother to beat the potatoes in our house, and I can't help but think of him every single time I make mashed potatoes. I guess our heritage has a strange way of trickling down unnoticed like that.
Champ, like its sister dish Colcannon, has stood the test of time, and is so commonplace that it is even featured in this old Irish nursery rhyme.
There was an old woman who lived in a lamp
She had no room to beetle her champ.
She's up with her beetle and broke the lamp
And then she had room to beetle her champ
Often served in individual bowls, with a knob of butter melting in the center, Champ like Colcannon, is traditionally consumed by dragging the potatoes from the outside of the bowl into and through the well of melted butter.
I'm telling you, as simple as it sounds, you gotta try that sometime.
What sets Champ apart is the green onion infusion in the milk, and it really does impart the flavor into the potatoes, though sometimes parsley, chives and even fresh cooked peas are substituted.
Oddly enough, Champ is traditionally prepared for Halloween, where it is offered to the fairies, a dish of it being left out under a Hawthorne bush on Halloween night or All Soul's Day, but it's a good option for our Irish celebration of St. Patrick's Day.
Next time that you buy one of those giant 15-pound bags of bargain potatoes, give Colcannon and Irish Champ a try. Can you ever really have enough mashed potato recipes anyway? Here's how to make them.
For more of my favorite mashed potato recipes, check out the collection on my Pinterest page!
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