Champ (food)
Champ (brúitín in Irish) is an Irish dish,[1] made by combining mashed potatoes and chopped scallions with butter, milk and optionally, salt and pepper. As recently as the mid-20th century it was sometimes made with stinging nettle rather than scallions but this is rarely seen now. It is simple and inexpensive to produce. In some areas the dish is also called "poundies[2]".
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| Alternative names | Poundies |
|---|---|
| Place of origin | Ireland/Northern Ireland |
| Main ingredients | mashed potatoes, scallions, butter, milk |
Champ is similar to another Irish dish, colcannon, which uses kale or cabbage in place of scallions, champ is popular in Ulster whilst colcannon is more so in the other 3 provinces of Ireland.
The word champ has also been adopted into the popular Hiberno-English phrases, to be "as thick as champ", meaning to be stupid, and to be "as ignorant as champ at a wedding", meaning to be uncultured or boorish (champ being a common everyday dish, not one befitting a banquet celebration).
References
- Carleton, William; O'Donoghue, David James (1896). Traits and stories of the Irish peasantry, Volume 4. London: J. M. Dent & Co. p. 328.
- "poundies". Irish Slang Sayings, Words & Terms. Archived from the original on 2016-09-13. Retrieved 2015-12-17.
