These easy St. Patrick’s Day recipes, along with an easy meal plan and tips for St. Patrick’s Day fun will help you add to your family’s fun this holiday!
Easy St. Patrick’s Day Recipes And Themed Food
We love St Patrick’s Day! It’s such a fun time to have a little feisty Irish fun with the kids! We love to make it a fun and exciting day full of green themed food and fun and laughter! In recent years, I have kept the Christmas tree up into the Spring, changing the decorations to blue and silver in January, pink and red with hearts for Valentine’s Day and Green with shamrocks and other Itish themed decorations in March!
Here are some fun ideas to get you started, but feel free to be creative and come up with other fun traditions with your family!
You’ll find lots of easy St. Patrick’s Day recipes here, mostly for salads and desserts, but you can also find some recipes for traditional Irish corned beef and cabbage and amazing soda bread here!
Fun St. Patrick’s Day Tips:
- Surprise your kids by adding a few drops of green food coloring to the milk in their cereal. For even more fun, have a pitcher of green milk sitting in the fridge for them to grab for when they get up in the morning.
- Try making green oatmeal or cream of wheat.
- Start fun traditions like having everyone wear green on St. Patrick’s Day or making shamrocks for them to wear. It doesn’t take much to get into the spirit of things, but it can make a fun and memorable time!
- Add green food coloring to almost any food for a very unusual “green” meal.
- Green Fruits: kiwi, green grapes, honeydew, green apples
- Green Veggies: Broccoli, green peppers, Brussels sprouts, green beans, peas, asparagus
- Green Meats: I advise you to stay away from any green meats unless you want to spend some time in the hospital HA! HA! But you can serve corned beef (fresh, of course ;-).
Easy St. Patrick’s Day Meal Plan:
Beef Brisket (or the more traditional corned beef and cabbage)
Rice (add a few drops of green food coloring to the water before tossing in the rice)
Steamed broccoli
Celery sticks and green olives
Hope’s Lime Salad*
Brownies covered in green mint frosting
St. Patrick’s Day Slush*
Easy St. Patrick’s Day Recipes
Here’s a St. Patrick’s Day recipe that just screams St. Patrick’s Day! Not only is it green, but it uses all that cabbage you got on sale the week of St. Patrick’s Day. The ingredients are different but it makes a very light and refreshing salad when served on a lettuce leaf.
PrintHope’s Lime Salad
Ingredients
2 small packages of lime gelatin
1 cup boiling water
1 (13 oz.) can evaporated milk
3/4 cup mayonnaise
1 (20 oz.) can crushed pineapple
2 cups cabbage, finely chopped
1 cup nuts, chopped
Instructions
- Dissolve gelatin in boiling water.
- Add evaporated milk.
- Fold in mayonnaise.
- Add remaining ingredients.
- Pour into a 9×13 pan. Chill.
St. Patrick’s Slush
Ingredients
2 (3 oz.) packages lime gelatin
2 cups boiling water
2 cups cold water
2 quarts lime sherbet
4 cups ginger ale or lemon lime soda, chilled
Instructions
- Dissolve gelatin into boiling water.
- Add cold water and sherbet.
- Freeze 4-5 hours, until set.
- Remove from the freezer 45 minutes before serving.
- Place 1 cup of slush mixture in each glass with about 1/2 cup of soda.
St. Patrick’s Day Cookies
For a fast St. Patrick’s Day treat, dip Oreo cookies into melted white chocolate or almond bark then sprinkle with green sprinkles. All you need to do is to hold a cookie and dip it halfway in the melted chocolate. You can now get Oreos with the filling colored for different holidays and these would be fun to use.
You can do this for any holiday. Just change the color of the sprinkles and, of course, you could use different types of cookies.
Lime Fluff
Ingredients
1 pkg. unsweetened lime soft drink mix
1 can sweetened condensed milk
1 (8 oz.) container whipped topping
1 chocolate cookie or graham cracker crust
Instructions
- Mix drink mix and sweetened condensed milk.
- Fold in whipped topping.
- Place into crust.
- Cover and chill.
Notes
You can make this without the crust and try different flavors of soft drink mix. You could use red for Valentine’s Day, orange for Halloween and so on.
Cool Gelatin Salad
Ingredients
1 (3 oz.) pkg. lemon gelatin
1 (3 oz.) pkg. lime gelatin
1 cup boiling water
1 can sweetened condensed milk
1 package large curd cottage cheese
1 cup mayonnaise
1 (15 oz.) can crushed pineapple in heavy syrup
Instructions
- Dissolve gelatin in boiling water.
- Pour in the remaining ingredients and chill.
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Re: planting a garden before you move.
I had a great aunt who was a quaker minister and they moved quite frequently. A slightly different situation, since she was living in parsonages, and not selling the property. But she always planted even if she was not going to be there to harvest. Because the person moving in would not have time to get stuff planted. She said it was the Christian thing to do.
I just love all these unique ideas. I love the green rice idea. I think I will make that. Plus all the other ideas are so creative and fun. Thanks.
Oh, I forgot. Try putting some green food coloring into cream cheese and putting it on an English Muffin. That is fun too.
Green cheese cake is fun and you get some interesting reactions !!
My big challenge is finding brisket (or corned beef) that isn’t about 25% globs of fat.
Actually, it’s better to find one with the fat; you could trim some of it yourself (preferable) if you don’t want it all, but you really need the fat on brisket if you don’t want it to be dry. We spent good money on a brisket last summer, and since it was the first time I purchased one I let the butcher trim off all the fat. That was a big mistake. The brisket was very dry, and we didn’t even bother finishing the leftovers.
This year I will do our corned beef brisket in our pressure cooker!
Seanette, ask the butcher at the grocery if he will trim most of the fat off the brisket. They will do this for free. Also, you or your husband could trim the fat off the corned beef.
I still hate paying for all that inedible stuff. :)
me too seanette .. but what i find is that if i cook the corned beef in a crockpot, when its time to cut and serve it the fat can be scraped off with a spoon .. thats how soft and pliable it is .. i used to spend a good hr b4 putting hte meat in the crockpot of whatever i was cooking it in and taking off the fat .. now i dont and well the fat actually adds flavor to the water …
and yes i agree i hate paying for something that i am not going to eat …
Good point Rose. That is one of the main reasons I love slow cooking meat (other then the fact it is so tender) all the fat bone just fall right off.
Jill, I just love your recipe for slow-cooked roast beef (in the oven) (and it smells heavenly, too!). Slow-cooking on a lower temperature results in the absolute best roast beef (or pork roast) ever. I’ve also found that cooking pork chops in our heavy dutch oven at 275 degrees (after browning them) are very tender and they fall apart as well.
We recently bought a digital, electric pressure cooker, and a pot roast turned out the same way, just falling apart. The pressure cooking method really infuses the flavors and you get a great meal in a short time. Our pressure cooker can also be used as a slow cooker, a steamer, and for browning meat or to sauté vegetables.
we are having corned beef today .. no one wanted the potatoes and no one wanted carrots .. so instead we are having corned beef, lots and lots of cabbage (can u tell we love cabbage? heheheee :D) and spinach ..
i know it sounds odd but hubby and our son wanted a different kind of menu this time ..
it’ll be good no matter what .. adn hopefully there will be lots of broth left over .. now that would be yummy! .. :D …
hope everyone has a good day today :D ..
just wanted to share :D
i love my crock pot jill .. for someone who isnt a great cook that crockpot has saved many a meal .. :D ..
and ur right jill .. u can take the cheapest toughest piece of meat and after its been slow cooked for several hrs its nice and juicy …
i will never forget what my sister told me once .. she had gotten a turkey for thanksgiving and well, after cooking it for as long as it was supposed to be cooked, she said the turkey “was a tough old bird” .. now not sure what that meant .. but she said the next day she put the rest of the meat with some water and a few bouillon cubes and let it simmer in her crockpot and said the meat was soo tender (even tho it was done from the baking the day b4) but i guess having it simmer slowly made the meat more tender …
just wanted to share something .. tonite we went to walmart and they had this container of small red potatoes .. they were sooo cute … they were the size of quarters and some were even smaller … i know i said we werent going to have potatoes but the size of these were just right .. just a few were all that was needed .. and the liquid that the corned beef cooked in cooked the potatoes in like 20 mins (if that long) ..
and the price was like $2.00 for this ..
and yes i know i could have gotten the bag of red potatoes but we dont eat alot of potatoes .. and well the size of them were just perfect ..
no tomatoes .. even at walmart they were expensive ..
enjoy ur meal everyone .. :D
also wanted to share something else ..
walmart has lemon merigue pie’s on sale for $4.98 (not sure if this is a true sale or if this is the regular price) .. and denny’s is priced $9.99 and perkin’s is priced $12.99 for the same pie (same size too if i am not mistaken) ..
i know alot of people make their own lemon merigue pie but i have never made one b4 and i didnt want to mess it up ..
it made a nice dessert for tonite’s dinner ..
(normally i do not eat these types of pies, i am more of the traditional apple pie person but the other nite my daughter took me to perkin’s for a slice of pie (merigue and the key lime, which i am not a fan of that either but she wanted pie and hot tea) .. the pie from walmart tasted just like the pie from perkin’s.. so that is what i am sharing with everyone.. (the merigue one) ..
There are different cuts that corned beef comes in. The point cut is usually the cheaper cut and has much more fat. The flat cut is usually more expensive but has less fat on the meat. Look for both in the meat section…
A friend said she always bought the Round cut of corned beef, so my first year of doing corned beef, I bought one package of Round and one of Brisket. The flavor of the Brisket was much better than the Round, and more tender. I did it the day before and when cool enough, scraped the fat off and out of it. ‘Twas wonderful, and needless to say, I only buy the Brisket now. Granted, the Round doesn’t have much fat.
I also do fried cabbage, which isn’t as bad for your arteries as it sounds. Melt some butter in a large frying pan and toss in the cabbage. Turn the cabbage so it gets some butter on it, sprinkle with seasoned salt, add some water (1/4 C?) and cover. Simmer on medium until it cooks down. It’s SO mellow!
Top o’ the mornin’ Everybody…..As the only member of my family that cooks the traditional AMERICAN meal (they don’t eat this for St. Paddy’s in the homeland), I always found the FLAT cut of the corned beef to be more lean (I said lean-not fat free)….It cost a bit more, but shrinks less when cooked…We always buy way more than we need, but it NEVER goes to waste!!!
Basic recipe:) Large pot of cold water, 2 heaping soup spoons of chopped garlic (from the jar-it’s cheapest if bought in the mexican/spanish food dept of your store!), 2 onions cut up into chunks (for flavor), 3 pieces of corned beef with it’s brine/juices, 3 tablespoons of pickling spices, 3 bay leaves (don’t forget to REMOVE them-choke hazard!!), 2-3 ‘glugs’ from a gallon of white vinegar…..Bring to a boil, reduce to simmer cook aprox 3 hours or until fork tender…..Remove bay leaves and discard…..Remove meat to oven pan/casserole and COVER with foil (it will dry out FAST otherwise!!)Add 3 heads of cabbage (cut into quarters and remove core, them cut quarters in half crosswise)and several small red potatoes (wash and prick with fork)into the pot of water the meat came out of….Raise temp to high to bring back up to boil for about 20 min….Check potatoes for fork tender, and cabbage should be soft, but not mushy….Remove and serve with meat……Don’t forget the mustard!!!….I can hardly wait-I’m drooling!!!…….
Irish Blessing to all:0)…May you be in Heaven an hour before the devil knows you’re dead!!! God Bless and Enjoy!!!
Please send all the carrots, cabbage and other veggies you don’t like to me in DC.
and lemon meringue is easy to make. Just remember to leave your eggs out overnight so they really whip up.
I also found the little baby red potatoes at Walmart and I put them in the oven with a little olive oil and baked them and they were delicious! They were goof with my cornbeef and cabbage.
I miss typed I meant to spell good! Lol
I make a green cake with a yellow cake mix and a few drops of green food coloring. Bake as usual and ice with cream cheese frosting. Yummy!
WOW–that’s a lot of food for 1 meal. I think I’ll spread the menu over a week. I’d rather serve something different everyday, then a lot all at once and eat the left overs for a week.
Paula is right– Corned Beef & Cabbage is not a tradition in Ireland. Neither is wearing green nor saying Top O’ the Morning. But its all good because it fun and brings people together.
Yesterday I saw a full blown rainbow near my house–my thoughts immediately went to visions of a pot of old and its delightful guardian, the Leprechaun.
Boiled bacon and cabbage is very good.
I was delighted to meet Irish corned beef because the tinned stuff we had at home was nothing like that..Er… does anybody really think that St Patrick’s Day food needs to be green?
Most kids do. It’s more for fun then anything. The same way we use red on Valentine’s.
We like to eat green eggs, sometimes ham too….
Preheat oven to 425
Equal portions: eggs, milk, flour in the blender with clean spinach.
Whiz it up and pour into buttered pan. We use stone wear or cast iron.
Into the oven!
Set timer for 20 minutes. It could take up to 40 minutes to be fully cooked. How I tell it is ready? When it puffs! Then it’s done.
I use 2 cups off each ingredient, but we are also feeding six big appetites.
If you want ham, chop it up and sprinkle over pan before or after pouring the green egg mixture into pan.
We serve it with ketchup or salsa.
That’s using natural food coloring and getting some good nutrition with it too! Yum!