The Full English Breakfast I cannot stop making started with a stranger named Niall, a one-burner camp stove, and a misty morning above the Swale valley in Yorkshire. I had signed up for a guided five-day walk on the Coast to Coast, and I had assumed the food would be pub stops and packed sandwiches. I had assumed wrong.
On the second morning, Niall pulled half a butcher shop out of his pack.
Meeting Niall Above Keld
Niall is a guide for a small outfit out of Kirkby Stephen. He used to work on oil rigs and now he walks for a living, which he prefers, and he carries his own pan in a cloth bag at the top of his rucksack.
We had stopped at a stone bothy just past Keld. The grass was still wet and my socks were already a problem.
He set up the burner on a flat rock and started unpacking. Two pork sausages each, four slices of back bacon, four discs of black pudding wrapped in waxed paper, mushrooms in a little tin, two tomatoes that had somehow survived the previous day’s walk, a tin of Heinz beans, and bread he had bought the night before from a baker in Reeth. He winked. Trail breakfast.
The smell that came off that pan was the first thing that hooked me. Bacon fat hitting cold cast iron in cold air, then the sausages going in, and within four minutes the wind smelled of nothing else. Two other walkers wandered over from the next hill just to find out what we were doing.
What a Full English Breakfast Actually Is
I learned more about the Full English Breakfast on that bothy doorstep than I had in years of British holidays. Niall is the kind of person who talks while he cooks, calmly, the way you talk while you knit.
He told me the dish is older than people think. The fried morning spread started as a gentry display in the English countryside, then got written down properly in Mrs Beeton’s Book of Household Management in 1861, and finally got adopted by the working class during the Industrial Revolution because it had the calories for a long shift.
He had opinions, too. American streaky bacon, he said, is not the same as back bacon and never will be. Back bacon comes off the loin and behaves like meat. Streaky is fat with a hint of pork. He also told me that hash browns are a hotel thing, a recent invention, and that no one in his nan’s house had ever served them.
The other thing. UK Heinz beans are sweeter and softer than American Heinz beans, and the gap between the two is the size of the Atlantic. He had carried his beans up the hill on purpose.
Bringing the Fry-Up Home
I stayed in touch with Niall. We email maybe twice a year. He sent me a photo last Christmas of his daughter holding a slice of black pudding like a trophy.
Getting the ingredients took a minute. The British grocery on Santa Monica Boulevard does proper back bacon, the kind that comes in a vacuum pack and looks more like ham than the streaky stuff at every supermarket here. They also stock UK Heinz beans with the orange label, and I bring home four cans every time I drop in. Black pudding I have to order ahead from a butcher near Pasadena who makes his own once a month.
The first time I tried this at home I overcooked the eggs. I was trying to time everything to the second and the yolks set hard, which was the point I realised this is not really a recipe. It is a sequence.
What I Used
- Unsmoked British back bacon, four slices
- Pork sausages, four links, the fattier the better
- Black pudding, four thick slices
- Two very fresh eggs
- Two medium tomatoes, halved across the middle
- Cremini mushrooms, about six ounces
- A tin of UK style baked beans, the kind with the orange label
- Two slices of day-old thick white bread
- Butter, lard or bacon dripping, salt, black pepper
- A pot of strong black tea, brown sauce and ketchup on the table
The Order That Matters
Niall’s rule and now mine. One pan, one sequence, one warmed plate waiting in a low oven. Each ingredient leaves a little fat behind and the next one cooks in the last one’s flavour.
Sausages first because they need the longest. Twelve to fifteen minutes, turned often, until the skins go dark and tight. The kitchen by this point smells of fennel and sage and slightly burnt sugar where the casings have caught.
Bacon next, two minutes a side in the sausage fat. The fat layer goes amber and the edges curl up the way they should. Then tomatoes, cut side down, untouched, until the cut face turns black in patches. Mushrooms after, in a fresh knob of butter, and they go from squeaky to glossy in about four minutes. You can smell them changing.
Black pudding gets two minutes a side and develops a crust like a good steak. Beans warm gently in a separate pan. Do not boil them. They go stodgy.
Then the bread. Fried bread is the bit most Americans skip and it is the bit I refuse to skip. A thick slice pressed into the last of the pan fat, pushed around, soaking everything up, until it is golden and almost shattering. The egg last, sunny side up, fat spooned over the whites so they set but the yolk stays loose.
Plate everything at once. Sausages, bacon, black pudding, tomatoes, mushrooms, a spoonful of beans in one corner, the fried bread tucked alongside, the egg crowning the lot. The plate should be too full. That is correct.
One Note on Brown Sauce
One last thing Niall told me, sat there above Keld with his second mug of tea. Brown sauce is the category. HP is one brand. There are others. He prefers a sharper one with more tamarind. I have come around to that opinion too, although I keep HP in the door of the fridge anyway, because I am not a monster.
I make this most Saturdays now. The dog knows the sound of the bacon pack opening. The bread goes stale in the breadbin on purpose because I want it for this, and on the rare grey rainy mornings we get in LA, the steam off the plate looks almost like the steam off Niall’s pan that morning in Yorkshire, which is the closest I get to being back on that walk.
Full English Breakfast
Ingredients
Equipment
Method
- Heat the oven to 200 F and slide two dinner plates inside to warm. Set a heavy 12 inch skillet over medium heat and add the lard or dripping.
- Lay the sausages in the pan and cook for 12 to 15 minutes, turning every few minutes, until deeply browned all over and cooked through. Move them to one of the warm plates in the oven.
- Add the back bacon to the same pan and fry for 2 to 3 minutes a side until the edges crisp and the fat turns golden. Transfer to the oven with the sausages.
- Place the tomato halves cut side down in the bacon fat and sear undisturbed for 3 minutes until charred and softened. Flip, season with salt and pepper, cook 1 more minute, then move to the warm plate.
- Add 1 tablespoon of the butter to the pan and tip in the mushrooms. Fry over medium high heat for 4 to 5 minutes, stirring once or twice, until browned at the edges and glossy. Season lightly and shift to the warm plate.
- Lay the black pudding slices flat in the pan and fry for 2 minutes a side until a dark crust forms and the centre is hot. Move to the oven.
- While the black pudding cooks, tip the baked beans into the small saucepan and warm gently over low heat, stirring now and then. Do not let them boil or thicken.
- Add the remaining 1 tablespoon butter to the skillet, then press in the bread slices. Fry for about 90 seconds a side, pushing them around to soak up the pan fat, until golden and crisp. Set on the warm plates.
- Crack the eggs straight into the hot pan and fry sunny side up for 2 to 3 minutes, spooning a little fat over the whites so they set while the yolks stay runny. Season with salt and pepper.
- Pull the warmed plates from the oven and build each one: sausages, bacon, black pudding, tomatoes, mushrooms, a spoonful of beans in one corner, the fried bread tucked alongside and the egg crowning the plate. Serve at once with strong tea, brown sauce and ketchup on the table.