Ulster Fry Meat

Ulster Fry Meat is the Meat component that makes up a traditional Ulster Fry. An Ulster Fry breakfast is a traditional Irish cooked breakfast made from breakfast meats, fried Irish breads, eggs and vegetables. Ulster Fries are so popular that they are often eaten for lunch or dinner and not just reserved for breakfast. Restaurants throughout Ireland will offer an Ulster Fry on their ‘all day dining’ menu.

For more information about an Ulster Fry, please refer to the post I wrote about it.

What is Ulster Fry Meat?

The Traditional Ulster Fry Meats Are:

• Black Pudding: This is a sausage made from animal products, flavorings and a binder.
  • Black Pudding typically, contains dried or fresh blood, as the main animal product.
  • The other animal product needed is fat. Fat provides flavor and moisture. Suet, the raw hard saturated fat found around the loins and kidneys of cows, lambs and sheep, is the traditional fat added to Black Pudding.
  • Flavorings are usually herbs and spices. The most commonly used are mace, coriander, cumin, ginger, allspice, and sage, to name a few, along with salt and pepper.
  • A binder not only holds the sausage together, but also absorbs the fat and retains the moisture the fat provides. Popular binders include pearl barley, oats, groats, breadcrumbs and rusk.

• Back Bacon: The cut of pork used to make Ulster Fry Back Bacon comes from the middle of the pig’s back. This cut of meat includes the loin, sometimes called the ‘eye’ meat or medallion piece, along with a little of the pork belly. The end result is a piece of meat, that when sliced, looks like an apostrophe! Back bacon slices are called ‘rashers’.

• Pork Sausages: Tender pork loin, is combined with bacon fat and rusk, then dried sage and fresh onion are added to give the Sausages a traditional feel.

Additional Meat Ingredients That May Appear in an Ulster Fry Include:

• White Pudding: White pudding, unlike Black Pudding contains pork fat along with a binder and spices. Some white pudding recipes include pig’s liver. Differing from Black Pudding, it is lighter in color, hence the name white pudding.
• Streaky bacon: comes from the pig’s belly. Usually it has an even amount of fat to muscle content. Known in the States as regular bacon. Bacon is thinly sliced and cooked until golden brown and crispy.
• Beef or steak sausages: are sausages made primarily from the meat taken from the shoulder, ribs and neck of a cow. They are very savory in taste and don’t require a lot of extra flavoring.
• Last but not least is Vegetable roll: it is a uniquely Northern Irish delicacy, made from cuts of beef and seasoned with herbs and vegetables such as leeks and onions. Slice it, then pan fry.

Ulster Fry Meat Ingredients

Ulster Fry Meat ingredients include Black Pudding, Back Bacon and Pork Sausages.

How Do I Make Ulster Fry Meats?

Your very own kitchen can be the site of homemade Black Pudding, Pork Sausages and Back Bacon. No need for specialized butchery skills. A meat grinder is responsible the making of the Black Pudding and Pork Sausage Meat. An attachment grinder is used with a stand mixer. I used a manual grinder that attached to a kitchen counter top.

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To make Black Pudding at home, using easily accessible ingredients, click on this link. Ingredients such as dried or fresh blood are challenging to get outside of Ireland and the U.K., so this Black Pudding recipe offers a good solution, ingredients wise.

Homemade Irish style Pork Sausages are also an option to make at home. These Sausages are Irish style because Irish pork was not an ingredient, (I’m in the U.S.). Read my post about Irish Pork Sausages for more about this.

Along with Black Pudding and Pork Sausages, Back Bacon can also be homemade. It is the easiest to make. Unlike the other Ulster Fry Meats, it only uses 3 ingredients and no special equipment. I used pork loin in the recipe which is readily available in the States.

Where Do I Buy Ulster Fry Meats?

In Northern Ireland there is absolutely no shortage of places to buy any of the above meats. Supermarkets and butcher’s shops alike are teaming with Ulster Fry Meat offerings.

Nowadays, there are so many choices between:

• organic or non organics meats.
• all natural ingredients or not.
• free from artificial additives such as nitrates, acidity regulators, stabilizers, and preservatives.
• fresh or frozen.
• butcher shop produced or commercially produced.
• brand name or supermarket brand.
• budget brand or better than the budget type.

Outside of Ireland and the UK, these Meats can be difficult to find. Try specialty Irish or British stores or even some of the larger supermarkets that sell imported European foods.

A Tip From Me

When making these Ulster Fry Meats at home, I recommend making a large batch and freezing it. Freeze the meat for up to 3 months and defrost overnight in the refrigerator. Rather than using them for a full Ulster Fry up, use them as the filling in a sandwich. ‘Filled sodas’ are popular sandwiches in N. Ireland. A filled soda requires all / part of the Ulster Fry Meats trio to be sandwiched between two slices of Soda Bread.

Got Questions?

I’ve got answers – hopefully!