St. Patrick’s Day Recipes: 2 Cozy Irish-Inspired Dishes from Maggie’s Kitchen

We don’t have Irish blood running through our veins, but that’s never stopped us from celebrating St. Patrick’s Day like we belong in Dublin. It started years ago when Wyatt was maybe five and Mason was just a baby—Jake came home from work wearing the most ridiculous lime-green leprechaun hat he’d found at the gas station, and all three kids lost their minds laughing. Now it’s tradition. The kitchen smells like corned beef and cabbage, Duke’s got a green bow tied to his collar (he tolerates it for approximately seven minutes), and we’re all speaking in terrible Irish accents that would make any actual Irish person wince.

Nana Ruth has her own Irish heritage—her grandmother came over from County Cork—so she takes this holiday seriously. She taught me that the key to real Irish cooking isn’t fancy techniques or hard-to-find ingredients; it’s about good butter, proper seasoning, and patience. Her soda bread recipe is genius because she figured out how to skip the whole temperamental sourdough starter thing and make something that tastes like it came from a Dublin bakery. When Clara was younger, she’d beg me to make it twice a week (not just St. Patrick’s Day), and I never said no because watching her tear into a warm slice with butter was basically pure joy.

The funny thing about cooking for this holiday is that nobody’s judging your technique—they’re just happy there’s good food and green beer. Jake once tried to make the corned beef on the stovetop and somehow managed to boil over the pot so spectacularly that the kitchen smelled like boiled cabbage for three days. We never let him forget it. Now he sticks to his grilling, and I handle the holiday cooking, and everybody wins.