Earthy green peas, crunchy sweet onion, sweet peppers and creamy Irish cheese with a delightful herbed yogurt mayo dressing, this salad is so easy to toss together and it’s the perfect thing to bring to potlucks, family gatherings and barbecues. Everyone raves about this salad!
Honest moment here: I don’t know if this salad is authentically Irish, but it’s got all the colors of the Irish flag and real Irish cheese, so it feels VERY Irish to me. It has a lot of the same flavors of an Irish pub salad and the same herbs and flavorings that the Irish often use in their rustic style of cooking.
This cheesy pea salad is an Irish twist on my White Cheddar Green Pea Salad that I totally love even more than the original.
I used Kerrygold Dubliner cheese in this salad because I can get it in BIG blocks at Costco and it’s so good I can use it on just about everything. It’s seriously one of my favorite cheeses ever. Dubliner is a hard cheese that is nutty, sharp and sweet all at the same time. I love to marinate it, melt it on garlic toast or eggs, eat it with my sourdough crackers, or just snack on it all by myself. (No, Kerrygold didn’t pay me to say that … it’s just a cheese I really really love.)
Kerrygold grass-fed butter and cheese have become staples in my house … I started buying the Kerrygold butter when my nutritionist suggested adding grass-fed butter to my diet to help with my cholesterol and I discovered the same principle applies to grass-fed cheese, so I can say YES to big blocks of Dubliner cheese in my life.
I took this salad to a barbeque at a friend’s house last night … it was supposed to be a social distancing visit (or at least that is what my kids and I intended), but there was hugging, hand shaking, and yeah, we probably didn’t stay as far apart as we should have. It’s so hard to greet dear friends you haven’t seen for a LONG time without hugging!
Anyway, they loved the salad so much they ate every last scrap of it and asked for the recipe. I could have sent them my American potluck pea salad recipe, but I think this Irish version is much better, so here I am blogging the recipe the morning after so I can send it to them. It brings me so much joy to know that they loved it.
I hope you love it too.
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Irish Pea Salad
- Prep Time: 20 min
- Cook Time: 15 min
- Total Time: 35 min
- Yield: 6 – 8 servings 1x
- Category: Salad
- Cuisine: Irish
- Diet: Gluten Free
Description
Earthy green peas, crunchy sweet onion, sweet peppers and creamy Irish cheese with a delightful herbed yogurt mayo dressing, this salad is so easy to toss together and it’s an excellent portable picnic salad that everyone will rave about.
Ingredients
For the salad:
- 1 20-oz. package frozen peas
- 1 cup chopped sweet onion
- 2 hard-cooked eggs, peeled and chopped
- 2 – 4 mini sweet peppers, seeded and chopped
- 1 cup shredded Irish cheese (I used Dubliner, but aged cheddar works well too)
For the dressing:
- 1/4 cup light mayonnaise
- 1/4 cup plain Greek yogurt (or other plain yogurt)
- 3 Tablespoons sweet pickle relish
- 1 teaspoon sugar
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
- 1 teaspoon spicy brown mustard
- About 1 1/2 Tablespoons finely chopped MIXED fresh tarragon, thyme and basil leaves
Instructions
- Pour the frozen peas in a large mixing bowl and add cool water to thaw them. Stir a few times while you’re prepping the other ingredients to break up any frozen chunks.
- In a separate smaller bowl, soak the onion in water for 15 minutes. Drain both very well in a strainer. Dry out the mixing bowl by wiping with a clean towel.
- Once the peas and onions are drained, pour them back into the mixing bowl with the rest of the salad ingredients. Toss gently to mix.
- Prepare the salad dressing in the bowl you soaked the onions in by stirring together the dressing ingredients. Pour the dressing over the salad and gently fold it in until all the veggies are coated. Cover and refrigerate until serving time.
Notes
Fresh herbs aren’t essential, but they add a little magical flavor to the salad. If you don’t have all three (tarragon, basil and thyme), use whichever of the three that you have. Other fresh herbs such as chives or dill would be nice too.
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Keywords: Salad, Pea, Herbs, Cheese, Mayo, Irish
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