By Stephanie Schupska
University of
Georgia
Green beer isn’t Irish. Neither is corned beef and cabbage. But
along with green rivers and green clothes, they define an
American Saint Patrick’s Day.
Across the ocean on March 17, many Irish will probably fill
their pots with the customary lamb and potatoes.
“People in Ireland don’t see anything we eat as traditional
Irish food,” said Connie Crawley, a University of Georgia
Cooperative Extension health and nutrition specialist.
“Their ideas are typical lamb dishes. It’s really what we’ve
kind of developed in this country to be Irish foods.
Originally, lamb was probably more expensive in this country,
so we switched to beef.”
Crawley traces her roots back to Ireland. Like her ancestors,
she said, many Irish immigrants were very poor when they first
came to America. And that might be when corned beef came into
play.
“It was probably used because it was one of the least expensive
meats,” she said. “It probably wasn’t as flavorful a piece of
meat, and that’s why it was seasoned, to make it more tender
and more tasty.”
While all beef has some saturated fat and cholesterol, Crawley
said, corned beef’s biggest downfall is its sodium content.
Just 3 ounces of cooked corned beef brisket has 964 milligrams
of sodium, slightly less than half of what a person should eat
daily.
For those measuring, a 3-ounce serving is the size of a deck of
cards. Most people eat a slab of corned beef two to three times
that size.
“It’s something that’s a special-occasion food,” Crawley said
of corned beef.
Potatoes are probably the most Irish part of any American St.
Patrick’s Day dish. Many Irish originally came to the U.S. to
escape starvation due to the potato famine.
“Potatoes were a very big part of their diet at that point, and
they still are,” Crawley said. “That’s probably why potatoes
are so popular in this country.”
Americans can enjoy a St. Patrick’s Day fare of corned beef,
cabbage and potatoes with a little less guilt and with
relatively little hassle. Crawley suggests balancing that
sodium-loaded meal by eating foods lower in sodium the rest of
the day.
Also, add the cabbage and unpeeled potatoes in the last 10-20
minutes of cooking so that “they’re barely cooked instead of
cooked to death,” she said.
Find corned beef that’s as lean as possible, or cook it on
March 16 and skim off the fat before reheating it on St.
Patrick’s Day.
Crawley first heard of green beer in the 1970s in Cleveland,
Ohio.
“I think the Irish would probably be horrified,” she
said. “It’s probably a marketing tool for bars.”
Instead of indulging in dyed beer, she said, “there are good
Irish beers available. And maybe if you buy a better beer, you
won’t drink as much.”
A serving of alcohol is a 12-ounce beer, 4 to 5 ounces of wine
or 1 to 1.5 ounces of hard liquor. Men should drink two or
fewer servings a day. Women should drink one or less due to a
direct relation between excess alcohol and breast cancer.
“Beer has a lot of calories and not much else,” Crawley
said. “Moderate intake may have some health benefits. But,
again, the risk of abuse is so much there that people who don’t
drink shouldn’t start.”
As for what the Irish may be serving on St. Patrick’s Day, “I
went to an Irish pub in Amsterdam, and what they served was
shepherd’s pie [a casserole-type dish with layers of ground
beef or lamb, carrots and green peas, topped with mashed
potatoes],” she said. Traditional dishes also include lamb stew
with potatoes and carrots. But that may be changing a bit.
“Until the 1990s, people were leaving Ireland to work in other
countries,” Crawley said. “Now, people are moving back.”
As the Irish economy booms, she said, restaurants there are
leading a renaissance with novel, innovative cuisine.
(Stephanie Schupska is a news editor with the University of
Georgia College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences.)
