St. Patrick's Day Countdown: Champ
Written by Ciaran on Mar. 13, 2026 | 0 Comments
It's less than a week until St. Patrick's Day, and with just a few days left in our countdown to March 17th, we have an offer and another potato packed recipe for you. Check back in with us each day to see what’s up next.
More Mash?
We had Colcannon as our recipe yesterday, but as a Belfast boy myself, it would be remiss of me to leave out the mash potato dish that I remember from my youth, the regional version of this potato dish in Ulster.
Like this 1981 photo of the Falls road near our Belfast home, my memories of the city in the early eighties are pretty fuzzy! But I do remember Champ!
Photo Credit: Jeanne Griffin (CC BY-SA 4.0)
Champ or poundies or brúitín as it is sometimes known in Donegal especially, is a dish I remember very fondly as a child, despite the signficant presence of my old nemesis… onions!
I am well cured of my onion aversion now and I am doing my best not to pass it on to my kids - seen here enthusiastically harvesting a summer crop!
Photo Credit: J. Chadwick
Like many of the recipes we’ve shared in our countdown, Champ would have started out as a dish for the less well off, built around the availability of ingredients. Initially this dish would have used nettles, those stinging plants again, to provide flavor and nutrients in spring when food stores were running low. Just like Colcannon, Champ is an ingenious way to stretch a few simple ingredients, like potatoes, milk, and butter, into a filling, nutritious meal for the whole family.
Photo Credit: By Glane23 (CC BY-SA 3.0)
By the 19th century, it was firmly established as a comfort food, often served on a Friday evening in a big sharing bowl. Just like with Colcannon, each spoonful could be dipped into a central volcano of melting butter! Perhaps that’s why I was prepared to forgive the onion?
An instructive illustration for serving champ collected from Ballycastle Co. Antrim by Charles McAfee in 1937. Note the large central peak of butter!
Photo Credit: Image and data © National Folklore Collection, UCD.
But it seems I am not the only one taken with the butter puddle. The celebrated Irish poet from Monaghan, Patrick Kavanagh, alludes to it in a vividly depicted story recounted in his memoir, The Green Fool:
George told me. ‘Me grand-uncle was in Monaghan gaol for a debt of eleven shillings. Me granny brought him his dinner of champ every day. Twenty one and a half Irish miles to Monaghan, she’d have the champ warm enough to melt the butter.’
And again just like Colcanon, Champ is also linked with celebratory meals in spring, like St. Brigid’s Day or St. Patrick’s Day, but also Samhain or Hallowe’en. In autumn various tokens were hidden in the mash for the purpose of fortune telling. Hallowe’en Champ had to be eaten with due care lest you chomp down on a ring or a coin. Or wose still, swallow the token whole!
And I will need to look into it a little further but Champ also seems to have other connections with the supernatural in Irish folklore. A dish was often left out for the fairies either by a local thorn tree, or on the doorstep, to appease any passing spirits. A very different offering to the sweets the ghouls and ghosts get on Halloween these days!
Irish Fairies or the Aos Sí or the Sidhe are not the sort you want calling to the door on Hallowe'en or any night really! Very hard to picture this otherworldly tribe eating champ, depicted here in a painting by John Duncan from 1911 called "The Riders of the Sidhe."
Photo Credit: Public Domain
Unsettlingly, some homes would also leave Champ out on the kitchen table ready to go with a spoon for each person in the home. A spoon moved in the morning showed there were “visitors” in the night, possibly deceased relatives come back to enjoy some hospitality? Spooky!
Despite the ghoulish associations, Champ remains a "taste of home" for many, especially in Ulster, with the focus these days on the high-quality simple local produce rather than filling bellies - although that happens too! This is a great dish for St. Patrick’s day as it is very straightforward to make, can easily be scaled up to feed a crowd (as it was in times gone by), is immensely comforting, and obviously has the green covered with the scallions.
An excerpt from The Journal of the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland, 1893
The pro tip for making Champ is to mash the potato into oblivion but treat the scallions with due respect! Rather than throwing them raw into the mash at the end, or worse, sprinkling them on top, steep them in the warm milk first, so the entire dish is infused with a mellow oniony flavor that is surprisingly delicious. This is coming from a reformed onion hater! This recipe will serve four hungry folks and can stretch to six. If you are feeding a crowd you can easily double it.
Ingredients
- 2 lbs (approx. 900g) of potatoes and ideally a "floury" variety to give a fluffy texture to the mash.
- 1 bunch of finely chopped scallions (spring or green onions)
- 1 cup whole milk or you can use cream if you really want a rich dish but I don’t think it really needs it if you have a generous puddle of butter!
- 4 to 6 tbsp good salted Irish butter
- Salt and white pepper to taste. You can also use black pepper but white is traditional to preserve the creamy color of the mash.
Method
- Start by making your mash, peeling and quartering your potatoes and bringing them to a boil in a pot of cold salted water.
- Simmer for 15–20 minutes until fork-tender.
- Once cooked drain and return them to the pot to dry out for a few minutes. Do not skip this step as no one wants a watery champ… and the drier your potato the more butter it can take!
- While your spuds are drying infuse your milk or cream if you are using it with the chopped scallions over a low heat. Make sure you don’t boil. Turn off the heat and leave this mixture to sit. You will notice the dairy takes on a lovely green tinge - perfect for St. Patrick’s Day.
- Mash your now thoroughly dried spuds while they are still hot until you have no lumps at all! Champ didn’t earn the nickname poundies for nothing!
- Add half the butter to the mash and slowly pour in your green milky scallion filled mix.
- Useing a wooden spoon, an iconic implement in any Irish kitchen, beat the mixture until it’s creamy but still holds its shape.
- Season to taste with salt and white pepper.
- Spoon the Champ into bowls, or one big bowl, and use the back of a spoon to create a deep "well" or crater in the center. Drop a large knob of butter into the hole to melt into a golden pool. Heaven!
- Dip each spoonful in the butter before eating and try not to expire from happiness.
This is filling enough but if you would like to serve your champ with something, it gets on very well with simple fare like Irish pork sausages, which is what my siblings and I often had it with as kids. A side of bacon or gammon is also great, with that salt in the bacon working really well with the buttery mash. On particularly challenging occasions that stick in the memory, we had champ with a side of liver, I don’t recommend it! But a fried egg or two is much better. And for St. Patrick’s Day, a lamb chop and some cabbage or peas for added green!
What's Next?
Check back tomorrow for Day 14 of our St. Patrick's Day countdown, or open Door Number 13 of our 17 Days of celebratory offers!
Irish Luck
And if you fancy an Irish talisman on this Friday the 13th choose from some of our handpicked pieces. Our shamrock pieces are always a favorite. Or perhaps a lucky Irish penny? Or maybe you are drawn to the traditional charms of a medal or medallion. Take advantage of our St. Patrick's Day sale on now to get at least 17% off now. If you need help choosing, just get in touch. By phone or email, we would be happy to help.
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Ciaran
My Irish Jeweler
Born in Co. Antrim and reared in Dublin, I was fascinated with Gaelic culture from an early age. I suppose it's not surprising given my mother inherited a grá for the Irish language from my grandfather, an Irish school headmaster. And that grá continues! My brother and sister are now Gaelic teachers here in Ireland, my niece is an award winning Irish dancer, and I proudly work to share Irish culture through our Irish and Celtic Jewelry at My Irish Jeweler!
I love researching and reading about the history of Irish design. It's at the core of what we do here at My Irish Jeweler. I find much of it so interesting that I have to share what I find. I hope you enjoy it!
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