Breakfast in Ireland
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Tour around the world of breakfast: Ireland
The term Irish breakfast refers to a fully cooked breakfast including a selection of fried items, mainly eggs and pork products. This kind of breakfast is mainly served in hotels and pubs in Ireland and it is similar to English breakfast.
Mind, cooked breakfast are a tradition started in the 1880s. Before that, people relied in milk products and cereals like oats and barley for their breakfast, and so Ireland is one of the countries where milk and cereals are the most common breakfast at home, but we can give an Irish touch to the simple cereals by adding soda bread and some Irish cheddar.
Eat in
If you are having breakfast in a hotel, pub, bed and breakfast or restaurant, you will be offere the Irish breakfast, cooked version; at home, cereals and milk are the most likely option.
On the menu
Irish breakfast – A selection of fried items likely to be egg, pork sausages, bacon rashers, black pudding and white pudding; wash it down with Irish breakfast tea or coffee, accompany with brown soda bread or plain toast. Soda bread, great as toast, is probably the most unique Irish feature in a kind of cooked breakfast similar to cooked breakfasts in other countries.
You'll find the bacon can be grilled, instead of fried, or boxty -Irish potato pancakes- added to the breakfast palte, though this is not common. Other items that could appear these days are grilled tomatoes or mushrooms and baked beans.
Breakfast to go
Modern times brought the in-store oven and the possibility to bake part frozen French bread in te premises. So the convenience store breakfast take away was born.
On the menu
Breakfast roll - A breakfast roll is half a French baguette filled with the items you would find in a cooked breakfast: eggs, bacon, sausages... often seasoned with tomato ketchup and accompanied by spicy potato wedges.
Drinks
Tea or coffee are equally popular options at breakfast time; just plain or flavored milk for children. Orange or other fruit juice is often added for a more rounded breakfast.
Quick Irish breakfast recipe
Not the Irish breakfast you would be offered at a hotel, but the way make your normal breakfast more fun, adding an Irish touch.
- First a glass of fruit juice. Start with a vitamin C knock out by mixing 1 kiwi, peeled and juiced, with the juice of 2 oranges.
- Place ½ cup (30 g) of your favorite breakfast cereal in a bowl and pour ½ cup (150 ml) of milk over them; add 2 tsp sugar, if you must
- Toast 2 slices of brown soda bread and serve them with some Irish cheddar, sliced, on top.
- Wash down a cup of strong Irish breakfast tea or a cup of coffee.
Tip - If you don't have soda bread at hand or you need to race through breakfast, use crackers.
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