25 St. Patrick’s Day Food Ideas

A North American spin on the authentic Irish boiled bacon and cabbage dish, corned beef and cabbage is the official St. Patrick’s day celebration meal.

This recipe blends the generally separate meat and vegetable dish into a blended hash, chopping all ingredients into similar-sized pieces so you get a bit of veggie, beef, and potato in every bite.

Guinness is a stout beer synonymous with Ireland, served cold or warm.

Its thick, creamy consistency and rich flavor make it a key ingredient in comfort food dishes. This Beef and Guinness Pie puts slow-cooked beef and Guinness stew in a buttery pastry shell.

You even make the savory pie crust from scratch, while the stew slowly cooks.

This Guinness Beef Stew is the ultimate comfort food that only gets tastier with time.

Meant for the coldest Irish winters, this stew is filled with hefty chunks of carrots, potatoes, and beef stewed for hours in a tomato and Guinness broth.

The addition of flour to the sauteed veggie base helps thicken the broth so it’ll stick to your bones.

Every household in Ireland has a loaf of soda bread to accompany a meal or simply to snack on with fresh butter.

You’ll certainly need it to soak up beef and Guinness stew, for instance. 

This yeast-free bread is simple and delicious, using buttermilk and plenty of butter to create a round loaf with a dense interior.

An iconic casserole dish all over the UK, Shepherd’s Pie is a comforting lamb stew inside a mashed potato shell. This recipe comes compliments of famed Food Network star Alton Brown. 

It has a wide array of vegetables and starches bound with a thick roux. The buttery and ultra-creamy mashed potato topping is my favorite part!

Not only is this dish delicious, but it’s nutritious to boot!

Irish Colcannon is an authentic Irish side dish of mashed potatoes with cooked greens blended seamlessly within.

This thicker, heartier form of mashed potatoes is a surefire way to get your kids to eat their greens!

These minty green macarons are an edible twist on the classic Shamrock Shake.

These bite-sized cookie sandwiches use almond meal and egg whites to create the delicate and airy shells that house a mint and vanilla-flavored filling.

The cherry on the top is, well, a literal maraschino cherry!

Despite the name, Irish Potato Candy has no potatoes at all. The name comes from their potato-like shape and color scheme.

Irish Potato Candy is actually more like a truffle, filled with cream cheese, powdered sugar and coconut then rolled in a brown sugar and cinnamon mixture.

This is an easy no-bake recipe that will surely be the first to go from the St. Patrick's dessert table.

This classic beef and potato stew is perfect in its simplicity. However, there is a technique that ensures its flavor and texture.

The key is to coat the beef chunks in flour before frying them so that the meaty, starchy drippings infuse the vegetables and broth.

A bowl of Irish Stew and soda bread will heal whatever is as good for the soul as it is for the stomach.

Named for the limestone that adorns the famed Blarney Castle, these tasty cookies are a festive dessert to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day.

Their lime green hue comes from a pistachio pudding-based batter. The nutty sweet flavor and cakey texture make it hard to eat just one. For added richness, these cookies come dotted with butterscotch chips.

Second only to Guinness in terms of popular Irish alcohol, Baileys is a decadent Irish cream liqueur. Not only is it a great cocktail additive, but it makes an amazing base for French toast. 

This boozy french toast recipe uses Baileys in both the toast and the whipped cream topping. 

You can start your St. Patrick’s Day festivities bright and early with these green Shamrock-shaped pancakes.

You can save the labor of making these from scratch by using your favorite pancake mix and adding a few drops of green food coloring.

If you can’t find Shamrock pancake molds, you can use Shamrock cookie cutters.

Check out other fun pancake ideas to make!

This traditional Irish breakfast bread comes from the Gaelic words, Bairin breac, which translates to speckled loaf. True to its name, Barmbrack is a yeast bread laden with specks of dried fruit.

This authentic recipe blends black tea and milk into the batter along with sugar, raisins, and currants. It tastes best toasted with butter in my opinion.

If you’ve ever dyed Easter eggs, this clever recipe simply uses hard-boiled eggs without the shells still on them.

It’s a classic deviled egg recipe that adds one extra step, which you can do while you prepare the filling.

Place the boiled egg whites in a jar of water with a few drops of green food coloring, and voila, you have St. Patrick’s Day deviled egg whites! 

This super easy recipe creates the cutest bite-sized, bright green whoopie pies with cream cheese filling.

Instead of making them from scratch, you streamline the process by using premade sugar cookie batter embellished with extra eggs and flour for a cakier texture.

The cream cheese filling is store-bought, too!

A combination of a green smoothie and a bowl of oatmeal, this green oatmeal recipe gets its coloring from fresh spinach.

You start by making a green smoothie with spinach, bananas, and milk, using the resulting green liquid to cook the oats.

I like the addition of chia seeds for a fun, crunchy texture.

Instead of Shamrock-colored batter, these Shamrock Cupcakes come in the shape of a Shamrock!

No cookie cutters are necessary for this recipe. Instead, you use makeshift tin foil cylinders to press the cupcake wrappers in at four different points.

The final touch is green-dyed frosting. 

Another sumptuous dessert modeled off the McDonald’s milkshake, Shamrock Shake Lasagna is a flourless, bake-free layered mousse.

It starts with an Oreo crust foundation, topped with chocolate cheesecake, minty vanilla pudding, and a whipped cream topping.

This luxuriously creamy dessert takes the classic chocolate and mint duo to new heights.

You can even step up the mint flavor with Mint Oreos!

This St. Patrick’s Day Muddy Buddies recipe is a sweet and colorful trail mix that is a fun project to make with your kids. It’s also a great party favor that will serve as a tasty after-school snack.

It blends chocolate and peanut butter with Chex cereal and powdered sugar, throwing in green M&Ms and dark chocolate chips for color and texture.

If you’re looking for a challenge, these elaborate Lime and Ginger Chewies are well worth the effort.

Blending sugar with lime juice, zest, and ginger adds a flavorful infusion to these elegantly thin and perfectly chewy cookies.

I enjoy dipping these chewies into a hot cup of milky Irish breakfast tea.

Another authentic Irish recipe, Dublin Coddle is a sausage and potato stew with a thick brown gravy broth.

Pork lovers will rejoice at the presence of both pork sausage and bacon in this savory bowl of comfort food. 

The caramelized onions add a sweet compliment to the savory pork. 

This delicious brownie recipe combines brownies and cheesecake into one marbled dish.

Blending fudgy brownie batter with mint-infused cream cheese gives you a complex flavor and texture profile that’s a trifecta of creamy, minty, and chocolaty.

The final touch is stamping the brownie into shamrock shapes with a cookie cutter.

These mini cheesecakes in the form of cupcakes are a show-stopping centerpiece for any dessert table. 

Each cupcake wrapper contains a rich chocolate and Baileys-infused cheesecake atop a thin oreo crust, topped with Baileys-infused whipped cream.

Their cute presentation also provides a perfectly proportioned, hand-held, single-serving dessert.

These rice Krispie Treats are true to the classic recipes of our childhood.

Blending rice Krispie cereal with marshmallows and butter, these sweet, crunchy treats get dressed up in St. Patrick’s Day colors with a simple drizzle of melted white and green candies.

These tasty treats are quick, fun to make, and loved by all.

Since potatoes are the favored carbohydrate in Ireland, it’s only logical that they’d have a potato pancake recipe. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a more delicious rendition of fried potatoes.

This recipe serves potatoes three ways, using a blend of grated potatoes and mashed potatoes, all formed into a fried pancake. I like adding shredded cheese and scallions to the batter.