Have you ever had colcannon? A St. Patrick's day favorite, colcannon is an Irish potato recipe. [source] At its most essential, the colcannon recipe is mashed potatoes mixed with chopped cabbage or kale. Other additions like bacon, ham, scallions or yellow onions are also common. [source]

Happy St. Patrick's Day. I'm not Christian, but due to the influence that my religion has had on St. Patrick's Day, I like to celebrate it in all of its green and delicious mealed glory. And now so can you!

Materials.

• 2 big russet potatoes from the individual sale bin (or 2.5 lbs of russet potatoes from the bulk bags) {here is why the kind of potato matters}
• 1/2 head of regular cheap cabbage [substitute kale]
• 1/2 onion [substitute 1/2 TBSP dehydrated onion flakes and skip step 2]
• 2/3 cup plant-based "milk" [substitute 1 cup heavy cream and eliminate the 1/3 c olive oil that follows and skip step 9]
• 1/3 cup + 1 TBSP olive oil; divided
• 1 package faux bacon
• 1 TBSP butter
• 1/2 cup water
• extra chopped onion, scallions, or chives to taste
• salt and pepper to taste
  .
  .
• Instant Pot
• knife
• cutting board
• kitchen timer
• random jar with a liquid-tight lid
• masher

Method.

1. Put your small aliquot of olive oil (1 TBSP) and butter (1 TBSP) into the Instant Pot and set it to Sauté. While it is heating up ...
2. Take out your cutting board and knife and halve your onion and rough chop that half.
3. When the Instant Pot says HOT, add the chopped onion (1/2) and stir it [ed. note: with the masher if you don't want to dirty extra dishes] to coat the onion in fats. Now set timers for 3 minutes, 2 minutes, and 1 minute. If you have a single timer, set it for 1 minute and keep resetting it to a mental count of 3. Every time the timer rings, stir the contents of the pot. Meanwhile ...
4. Using your cutting board and knife, halve your head of cabbage and rough chop that half.
5. When the 3rd minute of kitchen timer rings, add the chopped cabbage (1/2) to the Instant Pot and stir it to mix thoroughly. Once again, set timers for 3 minutes, 2 minutes, and 1 minute. If you have a single timer, set it for 1 minute and keep resetting it to a mental count of 3. Every time the timer rings, stir the contents of the pot. Meanwhile ...
6. Using your cutting board and knife, chunk your skin-on potatoes (2) and, if you haven't already, measure out your water (1/2 cup).
7. When the 3rd minute of kitchen timer rings, press CANCEL and immediately add the water (1/2 cup) to stop the cooking process. Then add your potatoes (2, chunked).
8. Close the lid of your Instant Pot and set the valve to SEAL. Now press PRESSURE COOK (normal, high pressure for sub-settings) and set it to 5 minutes and let it do its thing. Turn off KEEP WARM. Meanwhile ...
9. In your jar, measure out your plant-based "milk" (2/3 cup) and your remaining aliquot of olive oil (1/3 cup), cap the jar with the lid screwed on tightly, and shake vigorously until the contents have mixed and homogenized. You've now created vegan heavy cream!
10. Take the remainder of the time to cook your package of faux bacon. I used the Morningstar Farms faux bacon and cooked it in the microwave because I am not a fan of skillet work if I can help it.
11. As soon as the Instant Pot completes its cooking cycle, quick release the pressure. Do you have any spare liquid? If so, drain it off and reserve that for use in Scrap Soup or to substitute as vegetable broth in any other recipes.
12. Take the inner pot out of the Instant Pot and put it on the counter for this next step in order to avoid damaging the spring mechanism of the heating element. Add your faux bacon (1 pkg, cooked) and jar of vegan heavy cream (1 cup) to the contents of the pot.
13. Take your masher and mash the dickens out of the contents of the inner pot until it has the consistency you desire. And that's it, your cooking adventure is complete!
14. Serve into bowls [ed. note: we found that you can serve with the masher instead of dirtying a serving spoon].

Serving suggestions.

Garnish to taste with extra chopped onion, scallions, or chives and allow guests to add salt and pepper to taste; we recommend encouraging guests to add pepper first to brighten the flavors and then salt only if necessary. We then paired our Colcannon with a 3 hour long St Patrick's Day episode of the Irish and Celtic Music Podcast cast to our smart speaker. Since we aren't alcohol drinkers in this house, we used kombucha served in shot glasses to fake a nice hearty Irish beer ... it didn't work but the effort counted.

Tools to make this easier. Instead of using a knife to do the chopping, or for more consistent results, I like to use a hinged dicer. I cannot praise my smart speaker enough for its ability to have multiple kitchen timers running at a time so recommend the upgrade over devices that only allow a single timer at a time; there are websites that do the same if you open in a new tab. I find that when I sauté in the Instant Pot, the inner pot likes to spin and spin so I use a refrigerator magnet clip to hold it in place on the rim; Instant Pot sells an official one. Instead of a traditional masher, I prefer to use a chop-stir (I got mine at Dollar Tree for $1.25) which I think is easier to use and does a comparable job to the more traditional kind of masher.

Bibliography. The base of my adaptation was this already-Instant Pot recipe, to which I added (faux) bacon following guidance from this recipe. I pulled in option number one from this website of heavy cream substitutions, as I never, ever have heavy cream to hand.