I made a traditional Irish breakfast for St. Patrick's Day and the hearty meal took me back to my roots

I knew I could have stuck with American breakfast sausages and bacon, and nixed the white or black pudding altogether, but I wanted my breakfast to be as traditional as possible.

Myers of Keswick in the West Village had everything I needed for my breakfast: sausages, Irish bacon, white pudding, and even HP sauce, which is technically a British favorite, but I decided to add it anyway.

If you don't live in New York City, you can also order many types of British and Irish meat online at retailers like Jolly Posh Foods.

White pudding usually consists of oats, pork meat, fat, and bread, as well as seasonings, while black pudding also contains pork or beef blood and is known as blood sausage.

While this may not sound appetizing to some Americans, I grew up eating and loving the stuff. It's perfectly salty, fatty, and is often hard to find anywhere in the US.

It's usually difficult to find soda bread in stores. However, since I prepared my breakfast around St. Patrick's Day, I was able to find some Irish-style soda bread in my local Wegmans grocery store.

I quartered the tomatoes and thinly sliced the mushrooms before adding them to a skillet.

You can also use olive oil or any butter you have on hand, but using Irish butter like Kerry Gold will add a lot of flavor to the dish.

There was a lot of water in the pan from the mushrooms, tomatoes, and the butter I added. I poured a little bit out then set the tomatoes and mushrooms aside while I began cooking the other ingredients.

I was glad I bought the bangers, since they're much thicker than American breakfast sausages. I cooked the sausages and the white pudding in the oven at 400 degrees Fahrenheit for about 30 minutes.

Bacon in the British Isles looks noticeably different compared to most standard bacon you'll find in the United States. In Ireland, bacon typically comes from the back, or the loin, of the pig, rather than the belly. It more closely resembles what we know as Canadian bacon or "country ham" in the South.

While baked beans are super easy to make — all you have to do is pour the can into a bowl or saucepan and heat them up — I was ready to eat by this point and was dreading making yet another ingredient.

I also remembered not being a huge fan of baked beans when I ate this meal as a child. Still, I decided to give them a fair shot.

I realized immediately that I had made way too much food, but thankfully I had two roommates who were also dying to partake in the traditional breakfast.

This meal admittedly took quite a while and four different pans to make. I usually stick to yogurt and honey for breakfast, so this felt like a lot of work.

HP Sauce, which tastes tangy and vinegary, is typically added to English breakfasts, but I grew up always adding it to the breakfasts at my grandparents' house, so I figured it would be alright. In Ireland, a similar brown sauce by Chef is also used for breakfasts.

It looked just like the Irish breakfast recipe by Happy Foods Tube that I was following.

The white pudding was perfectly crumbly and tasted super authentic — it honestly tasted like I was back in my grandparents' home. The bacon slices, or rashers as they're sometimes called, were perfectly browned without being too crispy.

The bacon definitely wasn't as greasy as most American bacon I've had, which I greatly preferred. I also enjoyed the beans on toast and the mushrooms — the savory flavors really complemented all three kinds of meat.

It was slightly sweet and I enjoyed the taste of the dried fruit inside. However, I think I preferred the regular toast, which I dipped in the sunny-side-up eggs as I always do.

I didn't like the texture and thought the tomato slices were mushy and unappetizing. Something about a warm tomato just didn't sit right with me.

The scents that wafted through my kitchen combined with the actual taste of the food instantly brought me back to my grandparents' house when I was younger. I haven't seen my grandparents in many years, but this meal really made me feel like I was 8 years old again.

While I definitely wouldn't go to the trouble of making this meal every weekend, I would make the effort for a special occasion, especially now that I know I can find authentic sausages, bacon, and white pudding here in New York City.

This story was originally published in March 2022, and most recently updated on March 17, 2024.