How, Exactly, Do You Serve Irish Soda Bread?

America's cravings for Irish soda bread reach their peak right around St. Patrick's Day, when the nation dons green clothing, drinks beer, and celebrates everything associated with Ireland. Truthfully, the quick bread can be enjoyed any time of the year, but its association with the Emerald Isle makes it particularly popular during the holiday. 

In fact, we compiled a selection of the best recipes to help you celebrate St. Patrick's Day, and several of them would be great with soda bread. Not only is it a cinch to make, with minimal ingredients and preparation time, but the best way to serve it is incredibly simple: warm with a generous smear of butter. With this one topping, you can enjoy and appreciate the unique texture of the bread and its hearty flavor. Incidentally, the best way to enjoy Irish butter is to smear it on a slice of bread.

Irish soda bread prepared correctly has a texture similar to an American biscuit, so if it is sliced too thin, it may fall apart. With that said, it's best cut into thicker slices that will maintain their shape even after slathering them with butter. Of course, you don't need to stop at plain butter; adding honey, jam, citrus curds, or marmalade makes this a wonderful snack to serve with coffee or tea any time of the day.

Like other kinds of bread, Irish soda bread is perfect for dunking into soups and stews, especially traditional Irish recipes like potato, beef barley, pea, creamy cauliflower, and Irish vegetable soups. If you like to serve your meals with bread as a side, Irish soda bread makes a great option, but be sure to offer plenty of butter alongside it. It's a staple on an Irish ploughman's lunch, which traditionally includes buttered soda bread, sliced ham, boiled eggs, pickles, cheese, mustard, and chutneys served rustically on a platter. You can enjoy all the ingredients separately, or build them to your liking on top of the bread.

If you'd like to use Irish soda bread in a sandwich, you certainly can, but again, make sure you use nice, thick slices so the bread stays together. Even better is if you toast the bread first to give it extra stability. You can make an excellent grilled cheese sandwich with this variety. Use good quality Irish cheddar cheese (there are multiple amongst the Aldi Finds you'll want to stock up on for St. Patrick's Day), perhaps some thinly sliced apple, and some cooked bacon.

If you find yourself with leftover Irish soda bread and it's beginning to go stale, don't throw it away; cube it up and toss with melted butter and herbs to make croutons, which would be perfect on top of soup, or crumble the bread up, freeze it, and save it for stuffing.