Every State’s Favorite Traditional Irish Dish for St. Patrick’s Day

The moment March rolls around, it’s the first sign that there are two big things happening soon – spring and, much more importantly, St. Patrick’s Day.

When you think about the notoriously green-covered and leprechaun-filled holiday, there are probably a few activities that come to mind. Drinking a few pints of beer, wearing as much green as humanly possible, eating shamrock-shaped cookies, or attending a lively parade through your city’s center.

If you’re looking for an extra special way to celebrate St. Paddy’s Day this year, why not add “making a traditional Irish dish” to your list of activities?

Most Interesting Finds

• Soda bread, a diverse quick bread made from sodium bicarbonate instead of yeast, is especially loved by states on the East Coast.

• Colcannon is a customary Irish side dish of mashed potatoes mixed with cabbage or kale. For some reason, the states that start with the letter “O” have a special affinity for this tasty St. Patrick’s Day side dish. Ohio, Oklahoma, and Oregon all search for colcannon a lot.

• North Dakota is notably fond of Irish Stew, a casserole traditionally cooked with root veggies and lamb, mutton, or beef. ND had a search interest index way higher than other states for this heartwarming entree.

• The infamous party states of Louisana and Nevada both searched for the alcoholic beverage of Irish coffee more than anything else.

• Guinness Pie might be the perfect St. Patrick’s Day food, bringing together the Irish staples of beef and Guinness beer. However, the only two states that recently searched for this Irish recipe at all were New York and California.

How We Figured This Out

To determine every state’s top choice for St. Patrick’s Day, we first had to compile a list of the top traditional Irish foods and drinks. After doing a bit of research into delicacies from Ireland, we landed on a top ten list. Without further adieu…

The Top 10 Traditional Irish Food and Drinks (in no particular order):

1. Soda Bread

2. Corned-Beef Hash

3. Colcannon

4. Corned Beef and Cabbage

5. Guinness Pie

6. Coddle

7. Irish Stew

8. Shepherd’s Pie

9. Irish Coffee

10. Irish Apple Cake

Now that we had a solid idea of the most popular Irish dishes and drinks, the next step was to figure out the states most inclined towards each one. To do this, we used Google Trends.

In Google Trends, we’d search each traditional Irish dish as a search term in the United States. We found relative search interest levels for each food/drink item by sub-region or state. This helped to determine which states had a particular fascination with a traditional Irish dish.

For example, when looking up the search term ‘corned-beef hash’ on Google Trends, we realized that Hawaii was the most interested in this Irish breakfast specialty, with a high relative search interest score of 100. Alternatively, Louisiana wasn’t super into soda bread because they only had a score of 7 for this term.

Every State’s Favorite Traditional Irish Dish for St. Patrick’s Day

Author

Sky Ariella

Sky Ariella is a professional freelance writer, originally from New York. She has been featured on websites and online magazines covering topics in career, travel, and lifestyle. She received her BA in psychology from Hunter College.