Before the Great Famine wiped out Ireland’s monocrop in the late 1840s, the average Irishman reportedly ate a dozen or so pounds of potatoes per day—many simply boiled. So it’s no wonder that cooks got bored and eventually dreamed up alternative ways to serve them.
In counties such as Fermanagh, Cavan, Roscommon, and Leitrim, where boxty scholar Pádraic Óg Gallagher grew up, the predominant innovation was boxty: a potato “bread” in the broadest sense of the word made from grated spuds and sometimes mashed ones as well, plus flour and perhaps a bit of milk or water. The components were mixed to form a dough or batter and then either baked as a loaf, boiled as dumplings, or griddled as pancakes in butter.
They’re a mate for almost anything: smoked fish, sausages, rashers, runny eggs, black pudding, corned beef, chicken curry—or just more butter.
“It’s a Northwest peculiarity,” said Gallagher, the chef/owner of Gallagher’s Boxty House in Dublin who was reared on the dish. “It doesn’t exist in other parts of the country.”
The griddled version, called
