Is Boxty Halal?

Boxty is the potato pancake of the north-west midlands of Ireland, from Leitrim, Cavan, Longford, Sligo and Fermanagh. Its trick is two kinds of potato in one batter: raw potato, grated and squeezed dry, and cooked mashed potato, bound with flour and buttermilk and raised with bicarbonate of soda. Fried in a pan, it is crisp at the edges and soft in the middle.^[3] There is an old rhyme for it: "Boxty on the griddle, boxty on the pan; if you can't make boxty, you'll never get a man."^[1]

Pan, bread and boiled boxty

Boxty comes in three forms. Pan boxty is a thick pancake, fried in butter. Bread boxty is shaped into a round, marked into quarters and baked or cooked on a griddle, then sliced and fried. Boiled boxty is a dense dumpling cooked in water, then sliced and fried in butter. Restaurants in Dublin and beyond also serve boxty as a thin pancake folded around fillings, like a crêpe.

What decides it

The boxty itself is Halal. What changes that is the pan and the plate. At an Irish breakfast it may be fried in the fat left from the rashers and sausages, and it shares the plate with bacon and pork puddings.^[2] In a boxty restaurant, the pancake is a wrapper for fillings; beef and chicken need Halal slaughter, and bacon is pork.

Ordering and cooking

Ask what the boxty is fried in, and choose a vegetable, egg, cheese or fish filling if the meat is not Halal. At home, mix equal amounts of grated raw potato and mashed potato with flour, a pinch of salt and bicarbonate, and enough buttermilk for a thick batter; fry spoonfuls in butter. For other Irish food, see colcannon, soda bread and the Ireland guide; for the breakfast pudding, white pudding.