Champ (food) Champ (food) Champ ("brúitín" in Irish) is an Irish dish, made by combining mashed potatoes and chopped spring onion with butter, milk, cheese and optionally, salt and pepper. As recently as the mid-20th century it was sometimes made with stinging nettle rather than spring onions but this is rarely seen now. It is simple and inexpensive to produce. In some areas the dish is also called "poundies". Champ is similar to another Irish dish, colcannon, which uses kale or cabbage in place of spring onions. The word champ has also been adopted into the popular Hiberno-English phrases, to be "as
Colcannon I think about it sure the nearer I'm to cry. Oh, wasn't it the happy days when troubles we had not, And our mothers made Colcannon in the little skillet pot.</poem> Colcannon Colcannon () is a traditional Irish dish of mashed potatoes with kale or cabbage. Colcannon is traditionally made from mashed potatoes and kale (or cabbage), with milk (or cream), butter (or vegetable oil), salt and pepper added. It can contain other ingredients such as scallions (spring onions), leeks, laver, onions and chives. There are many regional variations of this dish. It is often eaten with boiled ham or