15 Amazing Traditional NI Food & Drink We Love
By Janine Cobain
With its bountiful agricultural land and nurturing climate, it comes as no surprise that Northern Ireland has a rich history in producing quality food and drink.
It is renowned for the reputation of its local food producers, with many using techniques and recipes handed down through generations.
In recent years, there has been a reviving of forgotten crafts, such as brewing cider and making cheese, which have complimented the traditional butchers, who often work closely with local farmers, and independent bakeries, offering speciality breads and sticky cakes, which still flourish in most towns and villages.
Northern Ireland is also home to fabulous restaurants, who take advantage of locally farmed meats, seafood from our celebrated coastline, and quality vegetables from the island, creating traditional classics, often with a modern twist.
Northern Ireland’s culinary heritage has roots in the staple diet of generations of farming families; bread and potatoes.
To celebrate the Northern Ireland Year of Food & Drink here's 15 traditional NI dishes and drinks we can't resist.
Stew
While we can agree this dish contains meat and vegetables, each family has their own traditions, with the recipe being adapted over generations to suit taste and budget.
Whether it is Northern Irish beef steak, cut into chunks or minced, or pieces of tender lamb, slow cooked with onions and carrots, parsnip or turnip, with floury potatoes, there is nothing as restorative on a cold day.
Champ
With an annual potato festival, Northern Ireland is rightly proud of this locally grown vegetable and there’s no better way to enjoy it than mashed with milk, butter and chopped scallions (spring onions).
Wheaten bread
Originally made with wheat flour, its colouring comes from the addition of molasses and is a brown version of soda bread.
Fifteens
These sticky rounds, kissed with coconut and bejewelled with glistening cherries and chunks of yielding marshmallow, are a traditional favourite.
Made from 15 each of digestive biscuits, marshmallows, and glace cherries, they are bound together with condensed milk and rolled in desiccated coconut resulting in a tooth-achingly sweet treat, which may not be for the calorie conscious.
Dulse
Originally harvested by fishermen to supplement their income when fishing was poor, Dulse is one of Northern Ireland’s most traditional foods.
The dried seaweed snack is making a comeback, thanks to the popularity of natural foods and its proven benefits to skin and hair.
Yellow Man
Similar to honeycomb, but with the consistency of rock, this chewy sweet is often found at traditional markets and is often associated with the Ould Lammas Fair in Ballycastle.
Boxty
Hailing from County Fermanagh, Boxty is potato cake made with a mix of cooked mashed and grated raw potato, boiled for hours before being sliced and fried.
The Ulster Fry
Traditionally eaten every day by those farming the land, the Northern Irish experience is not complete without an Ulster Fry. Bacon, sausage, egg, tomato, vegetable roll and, of course, the obligatory soda bread and potato bread completes this belly-busting breakfast.
Potato Bread
Made with potatoes, flour, and buttermilk, this dense bread is cooked on a griddle and is a key component of the Ulster Fry.
Soda Bread
Made traditionally from basic ingredients; four, baking soda, soured milk and salt, soda bread is an established favourite across Northern Ireland.
Buttermilk
Although not exclusive to Northern Ireland, buttermilk – a by-product of churning butter on the farm, it is used in many of our breads, giving a distinctive texture and flavour.
Beer and Cider
Those from Northern Ireland are infamous the world over for the exploits with alcohol, however in recent years the fame has come from a number of successful microbreweries producing craft beers from Mourne Mountains to the Lakelands of Fermanagh.
Meanwhile Armagh has become the apple hot-spot of Northern Ireland, producing the finest fruit to be pressed into award winning cider.
Whiskey
No visit to Northern Ireland is complete without a tour of the Old Bushmills Distillery, where whiskey is produced with water drawn from Saint Columb’s Rill, a tributary of the River Bush.
The award winning range of whiskeys have been distilled there since 1784, and while Bushmills might be Northern Ireland’s most famous brand, smaller craft distillers are on the rise.
Brown Lemonade
While most countries choice is limited to cloudy or clear, Northern Ireland has brown, subtly different from clear – or white – lemonade. Legend has it the colouring was added in the height of the shipbuilding era, when drinking alcohol in the dockyards was banned.
Not keen on dinking ‘girly’ soft drinks, the workers at Harland and Wolff could drink a pint of brown lemonade in place of ale.
For more information log onto www.tourismni.com