Hearty Irish Soup Recipes

By Christine Szalay-Kudra

When you think about famous Irish food, perhaps dishes like beef in Guinness, potato bread and roast ham come to mind. Corned beef with cabbage is another popular Irish dish and the Irish definition of corned beef is silverside, topside, or brisket, which has been picked in brine.

A lot of typical Irish meals are nutritious, flavorful, and hearty. So, what about Irish soup recipes?

Examples of Popular Soups and Broths

Although you are just as likely to see a French onion soup on a modern menu in Ireland as a traditional beef and vegetable broth, Ireland is famed for some of its more popular soups. Potato soup, pea and ham soup and mutton broth are very popular and these broths are thick, warming, and delicious served with soda bread or rye bread.

Broth and soup recipes in Ireland tend to be simple combinations of meat or fish, potatoes or barley, vegetables, stock and perhaps some parsley. Turnips, carrots, and cabbage are amongst the most popular vegetables in Irish broth recipes.

You can actually create your own broth recipes by simmering meat in water for a couple of hours and adding some vegetables in the final hour. Add salt, pepper and perhaps some fresh herbs at the end and you will have a warming, flavorful soup.

Maybe you have made an easy French onion soup recipe before, in which case making one of Ireland's famed broths is not that different. Onions are used in lots of Irish recipes and you can use them in pretty much any savory soup recipe, chopped, minced, or sliced.

Recipe for Irish Mutton Broth

This is a typical broth from Ireland and it is easy to make. This richly flavored broth is actually better made a day in advance, left in the refrigerator overnight and then reheated the following day. This recipe serves six people and is very economical to make. Serve it with warm, crusty, buttered bread for sopping up the delicious soup.

What you will need:

• 2 lb neck of mutton
• 2 carrots
• 1 onion
• 1 turnip
• 2 tablespoons pearl barley
• 6 cups water
• 1/2 head cabbage
• Salt and black pepper, to taste
• Fresh parsley, to garnish (optional)

How to make it:

Put the mutton in a soup pot and cover it with the water. Bring the water to the boil. Skim the fat off the surface. Rinse the raw barley then add it to the soup pot and cover the pot loosely. Let the mutton soup simmer for an hour and a half.

Peel and dice the vegetables and shred the cabbage. Add these to the soup and bring it back to a boil. Turn the heat down and simmer the soup for an hour. Take out the mutton and pick through it, discarding any gristle or bones.

Return the chopped mutton to the pot. Let the soup cool and skim the fat off the top. Reheat it, adjust the seasoning if necessary, and serve with a fresh parsley garnish and some crusty bread.

Irish soup recipes are thick and hearty and if you like warming broths you will enjoy them. French onion soup is also comforting and full flavored and homemade easy French onion soup makes a great dinner for the family.

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