Recipe
🥙 LUNCH
Boxty
A soft potato pancake made from both grated raw and mashed potato, griddled golden, an Irish comfort classic.
Irish · easy · serves 4
prep 20 min · cook 15 min
~362 cal · 10g protein · 56g carbs · 11g fat · 5g fiber · 4g sugars · 6g sat fat (estimated, per serving)
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Boxty is the traditional potato pancake of Ireland, especially the north midlands, immortalised in the old rhyme: boxty on the griddle, boxty in the pan, if you can't make boxty, you'll never get a man. It is humble food born of the potato's central place in the Irish diet.
Its trick is combining raw grated potato with mashed potato and a little flour and buttermilk, which gives a pancake that is at once starchy, tender, and faintly chewy. Griddled in butter until golden, it is served for breakfast or lunch, often with bacon or simply more butter.
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Make it yours
✓ Naturally vegetarian and nut- and pork-free. No swaps needed.
Toggle a diet and the ingredients rewrite themselves with regional substitutes.
🥕 Vegetarian
🌱 Vegan
🌾 Gluten-Free
🥛 Dairy-Free
🥜 Nut-Free
🥚 Egg-Free
🐖 Pork-Free
Dietary labels are a cooking guide, not allergen-safety advice. We track dairy, egg, gluten, tree nuts and peanuts (we count coconut as a tree nut, following FDA labeling), fish, and shellfish; we do not screen for sesame, soy, mustard, celery, or sulphites. If you have a food allergy, read the label on every product you use, and note that a kitchen can cross-contaminate in ways a recipe cannot control.
Ingredients
US
Metric
Serves 4
1 1/2 lb potatoes, half grated raw and half mashed
1 cup flour
3/4 cup buttermilk
1/2 tsp baking soda (bread soda)
1 egg
3 tbsp butter, for frying
1 tsp salt
Instructions
1
Squeeze the liquid from the grated raw potato, then mix it with the mash, flour, buttermilk, baking soda, egg, and salt.
✎ Chef’s note
Wring the grated raw potato really dry in a cloth. Excess water makes a gluey batter that will not crisp. The pinch of bread soda reacts with the buttermilk to lift the pancakes so they are tender rather than dense.
2
Heat butter in a pan and drop in spoonfuls, flattening into pancakes.
3
Fry until deep golden and cooked through, about 4 minutes a side.
4
Serve hot with butter, or alongside bacon and eggs.
Irish potato-cookery tradition.
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🌏 While it simmers, know your destination
📍
Munster. Cork once ran the world's butter trade. The Butter Exchange opened in 1769 and graded every firkin that came down the mountain roads from Cork and Kerry, which made it for much of the nineteenth century the largest butter market anywhere, before it finally closed in 1924.
🗺️
Ireland. Corned beef and cabbage is Irish-American, not Irish: it took shape among immigrants in nineteenth-century American cities where beef was cheap and bacon was not. At home the pork tradition held, and the modern Irish kitchen leans hardest on what the wet grass supports, which is butter, cream, cheese and grass-fed beef and lamb.
🌍
Europe. A surprising amount of European cooking is under five hundred years old. Tomatoes, potatoes, peppers, maize, beans and chocolate all crossed from the Americas after 1492, and none of them was trusted quickly: the potato took most of the eighteenth century to be accepted as food rather than animal fodder across much of the north.
The story behind this dish is up top, worth a read while the pot works.
More from Ireland
Irish StewA gentle, honest stew of lamb, potato, and onion slow-simmered into pure comfort.
Full Irish BreakfastThe great fry-up: eggs, sausage, rashers, black and white pudding, beans, tomato, and soda bread.
BarmbrackA lightly spiced tea-soaked fruit loaf, tied to Halloween and its hidden fortune-telling charms.
Browse all Ireland recipes →
Good to know
Storing it: Best fresh and hot. Keep batter covered in the fridge for up to a day, and rewarm cooked ones in a dry pan.
Make it a Ireland meal
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Cuisine
Diet
Frequently asked questions
What is Boxty?
A soft potato pancake made from both grated raw and mashed potato, griddled golden, an Irish comfort classic.
Where does Boxty come from?
Boxty is a Irish dish from Munster, Ireland.
Can Boxty be made vegan, gluten-free, or dairy-free?
This Boxty recipe includes substitution suggestions for vegetarian, vegan, gluten-free, dairy-free, nut-free, egg-free, and pork-free versions, including several at once such as gluten-free and dairy-free together. Treat them as a starting guide rather than a guarantee, and see the allergen note below.
Is Boxty safe for people with food allergies?
Our dietary labels and substitutions are a cooking guide, not medical or allergen-safety advice. We track dairy, egg, gluten, tree nuts and peanuts (we count coconut as a tree nut, following FDA labeling), fish, and shellfish, but we do not screen for sesame, soy, mustard, celery, or sulphites. If you have a food allergy, always read the label on every product you use, and remember a home or commercial kitchen can cross-contaminate ingredients in ways a recipe cannot control.
How long does Boxty take to make?
About 35 minutes total (20 minutes prep, 15 minutes cooking), serving 4.
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