Your Plant-Based St. Patrick’s Day Menu: Irish Soda Bread, “Beef” Stew, and More

If you're hosting or attending a get-together this St. Patrick's Day and planning on making festive snacks, sweets, drinks, or an entire menu of plant-based bites, we have you covered with these five traditional recipes made totally vegan.

Start your morning with a superfood shamrock shake that gets its green pigment from spinach and is topped with dairy-free whipped cream and a cherry. For breakfast, indulge in matcha waffles with coconut whipped cream, garnished with matcha powder for a picture-perfect presentation.

Around lunchtime, enjoy a slice of Irish soda bread with your favorite spread or plant-based butter and sprinkle with chili flakes or seasoning of your choice. Pair your soda bread with a bowl of Irish "beef" stew made with peas, carrots, potatoes, herbs, and served with mashed potatoes or cauliflower.

For dessert, impress yourself and your guests with a scoop of dairy-free mint chocolate chip ice cream that's smooth and creamy but made completely creamless.

Turn your serving table into a rainbow by making one of each recipe, and you're sure to be brought a pot of gold for this lucky spread.

This shamrock shake is dairy-free and gets its green color from an all-natural ingredient. No need for toxic green food coloring when you’ve got spinach! Yes, read that right. Spinach. But don’t worry because you don’t taste it at all. However, if you still feel a little weird using this powerhouse veggie in your milkshake you can always substitute it for a pinch of spirulina or matcha powder.

This recipe also calls for one pint of vegan Vanilla Ice Cream, but if you don’t feel like using Vanilla Ice Cream feel free to go a more homemade route and use a can of coconut milk. Pour it into a resealable plastic bag, freeze it overnight, remove from the freezer, break it into pieces and blend with the rest of the ingredients. If you use this method, your milkshake won’t be quite as rich and creamy, but it is a healthier alternative for those who want it!

Recipe: Vegan Shamrock Shake

These pretty green matcha waffles make for a really cool breakfast or dessert on St. Patrick’s Day. Dairy-free buttermilk waffles are surprisingly easy to make but taste special thanks to the addition of matcha powder. They are also light and fluffy, with a perfectly crispy outer edge.

If you want your waffles to have an even brighter green color, you can add a bit of spirulina powder to the batter too. Matcha waffles taste the best fresh out of the waffle maker, but if you're making a larger batch, you can keep the rest warm in the oven. You can also freeze any leftovers, and simply reheat them in the oven or toaster when ready to eat.

Recipe: Vegan Matcha Waffles with Dairy-Free Coconut Whipped Cream

Irish Soda Bread is probably the easiest and quickest bread you’ll ever make. It’s a no-knead and no-yeast recipe made with only a couple of simple ingredients, totally vegan and dairy-free.

This rustic bread is soft and pillowy with a lovely crust on the outside. The beauty of this recipe is that you don’t need any baking skills or special ingredients to make a super delicious loaf of bread.

Irish Soda Bread is made with baking soda (Take note: not baking powder!), and vegan buttermilk (which is unsweetened plant milk and vinegar). The key to making this bread is a very good mise en place, a French phrase that refers to measuring out all of your ingredients and setting up your equipment before beginning the recipe. Baking soda will be directly activated by the buttermilk, so you have to work really fast to make sure your bread is in a preheated oven as soon as possible.

Recipe: Vegan Irish Soda Bread

This Vegan Irish Beef Stew is comfort food at its best. It’s hearty and meaty, with rich flavors. This chunky Irish stew is the perfect meal to serve on St. Patrick’s Day.

With a few simple ingredients, you can create the most incredible and flavorful stew ever. Onions, celery, carrots, potatoes, and green peas are the base of this stew. Tender jackfruit pieces look and taste just like beef chunks. It’s all cooked in the mix of a well-spiced broth and Guinness beer, which will give your stew an amazing depth of flavor.

If you can’t find any Guinness beer, you can use any other type of beer as well. Dark beer works best though.

Recipe: One-Pot Vegan “Beef” Stew

Plant-based ice cream that's both healthy and delicious is hard to come by – until now. Celebrate St Patrick's Day with a refreshing, green-colored treat: If you're a mint chocolate chip fan, avocado-lover, or someone with a sweet tooth, grab your spoons and dive into your new favorite flavor.

Aside from the delicious taste, this recipe is healthier for you and made with avocados, which are full of vitamins and antioxidants, prominently vitamin E, which helps boost immunity. The thick, silky texture of the avocados creates a smooth dairy-like feel when you scoop into the pint. It's easy to fool an ice cream fanatic or non-vegan eater with this recipe.

Recipe: Avocado Mint Dairy-Free Recipe 

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