The Ulster Fry
The Ulster fry puts soda farls and potato farls on the same plate, both crisped in the bacon fat. That double-bread hit is its calling card.
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Quick Facts
- What it is
- A cooked breakfast from Northern Ireland, built around bacon, sausage, egg and bread fried in the same fat
- Signature items
- Soda farl and potato bread (potato farl), both fried until crisp
- Usual supporting cast
- Tomato, mushrooms, black pudding and often white pudding
- Why 'farl'
- The word comes from the Scots for 'fourth part', because the dough is cut into quarters
- Soda bread raising agent
- Bicarbonate of soda reacting with buttermilk, no yeast needed
- Cooked on
- Traditionally a griddle or heavy frying pan
- Washed down with
- Strong tea, usually with plenty of milk
- Close cousins
- The full English, the full Irish and the full Scottish breakfast
The breakfast that fries its bread twice
Every British and Irish region has its own fry-up, but the Ulster fry does something the others only half-attempt. It treats bread as a main event. On a proper plate you get a soda farl and a potato farl, each a triangle of griddle-baked dough. Both are fried in the pan until the outsides crackle and the insides stay soft. The bacon, sausages and eggs are only part of the story. The bread is what people remember. It's an elegant bit of kitchen logic. Rashers and sausages release fat, and the farls mop it up and turn it into flavour.
Meet the farls
Potato bread is the older tradition. Irish soda bread only arrived in the nineteenth century, once bicarbonate of soda became available for baking. Instead of yeast, it uses that bicarbonate and buttermilk, which react to make the dough rise. That made it ideal for a household with a griddle, or a fire and a heavy pan, but no oven. The dough is shaped into a round, cut into four, and cooked on a hot surface. That quartering gives the farl its name. It comes from the Scots for 'fourth part', a reminder of the long links across the water between Ulster and Scotland. Potato bread is made from mashed potato, flour, butter and salt, rolled thin and cut into farls. It's thinner and denser than soda bread, and it fries up with a lovely chewy edge. Many Northern Irish cooks will tell you the Ulster fry isn't complete without both.
What goes on the plate, and in what order
A standard Ulster fry starts with bacon and pork sausages, plus a fried egg, though some people insist on a runny yolk for dunking the bread. Tomato and mushrooms are common. Black pudding turns up often, and white pudding, a pale, peppery oatmeal-and-pork sausage, is a regular on many plates. The cooking order matters. Bacon and sausages go first so that their fat is ready for the tomato, the eggs and, finally, the farls. Cooks who fry the bread in clean oil are missing the point. Then there's the tea. Strong, hot and generously milky, it's the standard partner, and it cuts through all that richness.
Ulster, Ireland, England or Scotland?
Put the four regional breakfasts side by side and the differences are small but fiercely defended. The full English tends to include baked beans, fried bread or toast, and sometimes a hash brown. The full Scottish may bring in a square Lorne sausage, a tattie scone and perhaps haggis, and can include fried bread too. The full Irish, as served in the Republic, is closest to the Ulster fry, with rashers, sausages, and black and white pudding, though the bread is usually brown soda bread or toast rather than fried farls. What makes the Ulster fry distinct is the pairing of fried soda farls and potato farls. Beans? Not a given. Many cafés will happily put them on the side if you ask.
A fry for any time of day
In Northern Ireland the Ulster fry isn't confined to the morning. Cafés and hotels across Belfast and the rest of the country serve it all day, and plenty of people treat it as a proper meal at lunchtime or after a night out. It also travels. The same foods are cooked well beyond the six counties of Northern Ireland, since Ulster includes Donegal, Cavan and Monaghan too. Wherever it lands, the argument never changes: ketchup or brown sauce, soda or potato farl, and who gets the last bit of fried bread. The correct answer, as ever, is whatever your granny put on the plate.
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