Full English Breakfast Challenge! | Foreigner in the UK

After five years living in England, a full English breakfast was one of my favourite things. British food gets mocked quite a lot, but put bacon, eggs, sausages and beans in front of me and I am very happy. In this 2021 cooking attempt, I wanted to make my own version at home.

I called my approach the cowboy method: almost everything went into one frying pan. My breakfast also came with a couple of deliberate omissions. Tomatoes and mushrooms might belong on other people’s plates, but I wasn’t interested. They take up room I could give to something I actually want to eat.

The breakfast I wanted

For my version, I bought Cumberland sausages, back bacon medallions, eggs, black pudding and bread. I already had baked beans in the cupboard. Toast, a fried egg, sausages, bacon, beans and black pudding would be plenty for me. I knew I was making a foreigner’s interpretation of a full English, and I was fine with that.

I chose medallions because I’d been enjoying them lately, although I like bacon in pretty much any form. The black pudding was a packet of four slices from the Bury Black Pudding Company. I read the ingredients on the packaging, including dried pork blood, pork fat and grains. There was quite a lot going on in that little slice.

I don’t mind black pudding, but if I could swap it for a slice of haggis, I would. I much prefer haggis. I thought it would be fun to include black pudding and show it as part of this breakfast. It wasn’t the bit I was most excited about, but it had its place on my plate.

The beans were a less happy cupboard discovery. They were Heinz with no added sugar, and I really didn’t like them. They had been left uneaten for a reason. But they were the beans I had, so those were the beans I used. My enthusiasm for baked beans did not extend equally to every tin.

One pan, several breakfast decisions

I started with two sausages, then added the black pudding and two bacon medallions. This was my cowboy method in action. I wasn’t cooking each part in its own separate pan and bringing it all together at the end. The sausages, bacon and black pudding shared the space, and the egg joined them too.

I wanted one fried egg with a runny yolk. That matters to how I like eating a fry-up: I want the yolk to mix with the bacon and beans, rather than everything staying in neat little areas. A giant mess of the different bits is delicious to me. This was the breakfast I wanted to sit down and eat.

The beans also went straight into the frying pan. I didn’t have a microwave, and I wasn’t using another pot for them. Into the pan they went. You can have your opinions about that, but I was carrying on. I also remembered the toast, which was the exception to the plan of putting the breakfast together in that one pan.

Once it was time to plate up, I had my fried egg, sausages, beans, black pudding and bacon, with buttered toast alongside. No mushrooms or fried tomato had sneaked in. I had cooked the parts I enjoyed and left out the tomatoes and mushrooms I didn’t care about.

The very good mess on the plate

The bacon, egg and beans together were exactly what I loved about this breakfast. I mixed them up as I ate, and it was absolutely delicious. The end result made me very happy, despite the beans being a variety I wouldn’t choose again and black pudding losing my personal contest with haggis.

I can find plenty to make fun of in British food, including Marmite and a chip sandwich. A full English is a different matter for me. A big, greasy fry-up works so well. After living here for years, it was still one of the things I really enjoyed, and making my own only reinforced that.

My breakfast wasn’t trying to settle what everybody must put on a full English. I wanted a runny egg, bacon and beans all mixed together, sausages, toast and a slice of black pudding. That is what I made. By the time I finished talking about it, I was very ready to stop and get on with eating.

Watch my one-pan full English breakfast attempt.