Hosting a St. Patrick’s Day party typically means dying everything green and making sure there’s lots of beer. But you can be more creative with the green aspect and do more than just colour everything green.
For instance, this time of year we love to make chocolate mint cupcakes with icing that’s not coloured green, but instead has freshly chopped mint in it – for natural flavour and a few hints of the festive colour.
If you’re not going all out with a green-themed party but still want to put together some traditional Irish food, typical fare at such events include corned beef sandwiches on rye bread and Irish stew. Sadly, though, stew has gotten a bit of a bad reputation over the years as a plain and boring peasant food. But, like most dishes, this too can be modernized and revitalized.
Instead of just always using stewing beef, you could use a better cut like prime rib, tenderloin or even rib eye. If you want the stew to be traditionally Irish, add vegetables and garnish with a homemade sauce.
You can go completely exotic with stew and use a veal shank or beef braised shank instead of stewing beef so that there are no little bits of beef but it’s more like a soup.
Instead of dicing the meat and adding it to the pot, sear the meat in a pan with flour and salt and pepper. Then add stock and thicken the sauce. Add your vegetables and additional flavours – we recommend pearl onions, mushrooms, bacon and sugar snap peas at the end instead of frozen for a crisper texture.
Once you have this base down pat, you can change up the flavours with different seasonings, stocks and vegetables.
For more party thyme meal ideas for all of the celebrations you host throughout the year, check out our other blog posts.
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