Full English Breakfast
The full English is less a recipe than a small parade: sausages, back bacon, black pudding, fried eggs, grilled tomato, mushrooms, baked beans and buttered toast, all pulled together with a strong pot of builders' tea. The trick is orchestration, not cooking.
Ingredients
4 good pork sausages
4 rashers dry-cured back bacon
2 slices black pudding
2 large field mushrooms
2 ripe tomatoes, halved
200 g baked beans
2 large eggs
4 slices thick white bread, for toast
40 g salted butter
2 tbsp vegetable oil
Method
- 1
Heat the oil in a heavy pan and cook the sausages slowly over a medium heat for 15 minutes, turning often, until deeply browned. Move to a warm oven at 100°C on a plate.
- 2
In the same pan, cook the bacon and black pudding for a couple of minutes on each side. Add to the warm plate. Meanwhile, brush the mushrooms and tomatoes with a little of the pan fat and grill or roast at 200°C for 12–15 minutes until softened.
- 3
Warm the baked beans in a small pan over a low heat. Toast the bread and butter thickly. Keep everything warm.
- 4
At the last minute, fry the eggs in the sausage pan in a little more oil, basting the whites gently, until the whites are just set and the yolks are runny.
- 5
Compose each plate: sausages, bacon, black pudding, mushrooms, tomato, a small heap of beans, the fried egg on top of the toast. A pot of tea. Salt and pepper. HP sauce if you must.
Cook's notes
The single best thing you can do for a full English is buy proper dry-cured back bacon and butcher's sausages. Everything else is just heat and timing.