Nigella Lawson’s brown butter colcannon mash is her take on the Irish classic of mashed potato and kale, enriched with 150g of butter cooked to a nutty beurre noisette. It uses skin-on Rooster potatoes, full-fat milk, kale and spring onions, serves four to six, and the potatoes boil whole for anywhere from 40 minutes to an hour depending on their size.
The recipe is from Cook, Eat, Repeat (2020), and she made it on the BBC Two series paired with her black pudding meatballs. Nigella describes brown butter as “sweet, nutty and intense”, made simply by heating butter until its water evaporates and the milk proteins caramelise. That toasted butter is the whole point of the dish.
She’s unapologetic about the quantity, calling this a recipe that exults in butter rather than apologises for it. If 150g alarms you, she says you may reduce it, but not by much. Everything else here is humble, so the butter is doing the heavy lifting on flavour.
Nigella Lawson Brown Butter Colcannon Mash
Course: DinnerCuisine: BritishDifficulty: Easy4-6
servings15
minutes1
hour375
kcal1
hour25
minutesNigella’s beurre noisette twist on Irish colcannon from Cook, Eat, Repeat, first eaten in Ireland over 30 years ago. Skin-on potatoes, kale and spring onions, finished with two-thirds of the brown butter beaten in and the rest poured over. A comfort supper on its own.
Ingredients
1-1.25kg Kerr’s Pink, Golden Wonder or Rooster potatoes, preferably a uniform size
200g kale (stripped weight, roughly 300-400g on the stem)
250ml full-fat milk
150g unsalted butter
Directions
- Boil the potatoes whole: Scrub any mud off the potatoes and put them whole into a large pan of salted cold water (Nigella uses a 26cm one), then bring to the boil.
- Cook to tender: Simmer robustly with the lid partly on until a fork slides in easily. Smaller potatoes take around 40 minutes, larger ones up to an hour, so watch the pan doesn’t boil dry or bubble so hard the potatoes break apart.
- Cook the kale: While the potatoes go, strip the kale from its stems and tear into small pieces, picking out tough bits even from ready-chopped kale. Boil in a little salted water for around 5 minutes until soft, then drain.
- Hold the kale and onions: Once it’s cool enough to handle, squeeze out the excess water, return the kale to its hot pan, cover and set aside. Finely slice the spring onions, greens included, and set them aside too.
- Dry the potatoes: Lift the tender potatoes out gently rather than draining them in a colander, which can waterlog them. Wipe out the hot pan, set it back on the turned-off hob and return the potatoes to dry for a couple of minutes.
- Mash: Mash however you like, warming the milk first and pouring it in as you go. Nigella keeps the skins on for texture and mashes straight in the pan, but warns against a stick blender, which turns potato to glue.
- Combine: Fold the cooked kale through the mash and season to taste. Put the lid on to keep it hot while you make the butter and warm a serving dish.
- Brown the butter: Cut the butter into slabs and melt in a heavy saucepan over gentle heat. Turn to medium and cook, swirling often, until it’s deep golden with dark speckles at the base and smells toasty and hazelnutty, about 7 minutes.
- Add the onions: Off the heat, tip in the sliced spring onions, which will make the butter sizzle furiously. Pour two-thirds into the potato pan and the rest into a small jug.
- Finish: Beat the butter through the colcannon, scrape into the warm bowl and swirl the top. Pour the reserved brown butter and onions over and take it straight to the table.
FAQs
Why boil the potatoes whole with their skins on?
It keeps them dry, which matters more than it sounds. Nigella boils them whole and unpeeled so they don’t absorb water as they cook, giving a drier mash that then drinks up the milk and brown butter instead of turning sloppy. Draining whole potatoes in a colander risks waterlogging them, so she lifts them out by hand.
She also leaves the skins in the finished mash on purpose. Because you’re folding through kale and spring onions, you’re not chasing a smooth purée anyway, so the flecks of skin add welcome texture. It’s why she avoids a ricer here, which would strip them out.
What potatoes should I use?
A floury variety is essential for that dry, fluffy mash. In Ireland, where the dish comes from, Nigella would reach for Kerr’s Pink or Golden Wonder, but she can’t get either in London and uses Roosters instead, which she recommends you do too. Any good floury maincrop will work; waxy salad potatoes won’t.
Try to pick potatoes of roughly equal size, since they cook whole and you want them tender at the same moment. She’s realistic that a kilo of identically sized spuds isn’t always possible, but the closer you get, the more evenly they’ll cook.
How do I know when the brown butter is ready?
Watch the colour and the speckles, and trust your nose. The butter first melts, then foams, and after about 7 minutes over medium heat it turns deep golden with dark flecks settling at the bottom of the pan. Those flecks are the caramelised milk solids, and the smell shifts to toasted hazelnut. That’s your cue.
The moment it’s there, get it off the heat, because it slides from nutty to burnt fast. Tipping the cold spring onions in helps, since they drop the temperature and stop the cooking, as well as scenting the butter. It’ll sizzle hard, which is exactly what you want.
Can I use kale I’ve bought ready-chopped, or swap it?
Ready-chopped kale saves time but still needs a check, because Nigella points out you’ll want to pull out any tough stem bits even from a pre-cut bag. You need 200g of stripped leaf, which is roughly 300-400g if you’re buying it on the stem, so factor in the waste.
She’s also open to swaps: she recently made it with wild garlic in place of the kale and plans to do so again when it’s in season. Cavolo nero or spring greens would sit happily here too, keeping the same soft, dark green through the mash.
What do I serve it with?
Nigella is happy to eat this as a solo supper, in a big bowl, entirely by itself. When she wants something alongside, she reaches first for ham, or boiled bacon as it’s known in Ireland, though on a weeknight she’ll just fry up some streaky bacon. Her own favourite partner is the black pudding meatballs from the same book.
It’s really a comfort dish, so treat it as a side to almost any homely main. It would sit well next to her chicken with red grapes and Marsala, where the sticky sauce would pool into the mash, or bulk out a simple bowl the way her pasta risotto with peas and pancetta does on a busy night.
Can I make it ahead, and what about leftovers?
The brown butter is the make-ahead component: prepare it up to 2 weeks in advance, cover and refrigerate, or freeze it alone in an airtight container for up to 3 months and defrost overnight in the fridge. The colcannon itself is best made fresh, since mash rarely improves for sitting.
Leftovers keep, covered, in the fridge for up to 3 days. Reheat in the microwave, or cover with foil and warm in a 180°C/160°C fan oven until piping hot. Nigella’s preferred second act is to shape the leftovers into patties, and on the show she topped them with a fried egg, which makes a supper in its own right.
