An American Girl's Full English Breakfast

The UK really knows how to do breakfast right. Even when I stayed in a £10 per night hostel, the complimentary breakfast spread was insane. There was bread, all sorts of cold cuts, gherkins, jams & jellies, porridge, cold cereal, cheese, and pastries. I feel like breakfast in England was always so hearty that I wasn't hungry until dinner time.

Anyway, I was introduced to the full English breakfast in 2008 during my first trip to London. We were out in town exploring and popped into a little pub-ish eatery and I chowed down on a massive plate of what was basically just a pile of protein and toast. It was so satisfying.

I hadn't eaten a full English since 2010 (which was my last visit to the UK; I'm pretty sure I also had a full Irish on that trip too; yum). So, when I got a sausage maker and made it my business to make some mini bangers, I decided I also had to do a proper full English breakfast. I even went out of my way and made "Heinz" baked beans. If I wanted to go crazy, I might've baked my own brown bread and maybe I could've grown a potato, tomato, and mushroom in the garden and collected eggs from home-raised chickens. But I'm definitely not crazy.

Ingredients [for 1]:
1 egg
1 tomato
1 white button mushroom
1 slice brown bread
3 mini bangers (or 1 regular sized pork sausage)
¼ cup shredded potato (or diced potato)
¼ cup "Heinz" baked beans
+ ketchup or HP sauce
+ hot sauce
+ jam

optional
streaky bacon
black pudding
white pudding
kidneys

This isn't a typical recipe post. I'm just going to walk you through this fry up.

Before you do anything, get your plates warming. Unless you have a giant griddle and you can cook everything at once, in which case, I wouldn't bother. But, if you're like me and you're looking to only dirty up one or two pans, then get the plates warmed. This way, when your elements are cooked and plated, they'll stay warm while you move onto the next components of the dish.

Add a little oil to the pan and fry up some hash browns or home fries. Season liberally with salt and pepper and maybe a little cayenne, if you're feeling sassy. Fry until golden brown (and cooked through, obviously; crunchy potatoes are not proper).

Meanwhile, chop a few mushrooms and tomatoes in half. Pop onto a sheet pan, drizzle with olive oil, and bung it in the broiler for a good five minutes until they're roasted and charred.

While the broiler's on, you can also toast a few pieces of brown bread with butter.

Once the potatoes are done, get them onto some plates and start cooking the sausages. Get some good golden color on there. (By the way, if you're not into your bangers actually banging, poach them first before frying them.)

Once the sausages are out of the pan, get the eggs in and fry them in the fat that's been rendered out of the sausages. I like a sunnyside up egg; baby sister prefers over easy. You make the eggs how you like but I must insist that the egg yolk remain runny.

Get everything plated up, including a scoop of baked beans.

Serve immediately while everything is still hot.

I wish my local shop sold HP sauce; that would have made this breakfast truly authentic. But, this is an American girl's take on the full English so we had ketchup and hot sauce instead.

I'm a fan of ketchup on my potatoes and hot sauce on my eggs. Oh, and grape jelly on my toast. No marmalade for me, thanks. Seriously though, this breakfast is so satisfying. As you can see, it's full of protein so it will keep you full basically until dinnertime. I love the contrast in textures and flavors and it's delicious to dip the egg into runny yolk and get a mouthful of beans with some sausage. It's just the best. Lucky for me, we have more fresh sausage begging to be used up so I anticipate eating a this hearty breakfast every weekend for the foreseeable future.

xoxo.