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Perfect cooked breakfasts
Creating the perfect English breakfast - a story in six parts
Sausages
I find Richmond sausages make for an excellent all-round banger. I always begin my fryup by putting the sausages in the pan first, as they take the longest to cook and are also the slowest to cool. I use a little sunflower oil in the pan to prevent any uneven singes, and ensure they are regularly turned and rolled around, so they are well cooked and crisp.
Bacon
So many breakfast outlets have no idea how to cook bacon, serving miserable pink, back bacon with globs of fat still uncrisped on the top. I use smoked streaky bacon, because it develops wonderfully in the pan to a deep dark red colour, and take it out just as it is on the cusp of browning. This ensures it is slightly crisp, but still immensely flavoursome.
Eggs
Fraser's Fryups always use quality free range eggs. I fry them in a new pan, which I don't use for any other ingredient. This reduces the chance of sticking or broken yolks, and means the bottom of the egg is nice and clean. I always cook and serve the eggs last, to ensure they reach you piping hot and fresh.
Mushrooms
It is a very haphazard business finding the best mushrooms for a fryup. Some outlets prefer chopped or small button mushrooms, but I find the larger mushrooms have the best flavour. Tescos sells superb Portobello mushrooms at this time of year, and I like to halve them and fry them in a little oil for the best taste.
Black Pudding
Believe it or not, black pudding is one of the most costly elements of a fryup. What was once an economical choice to bulk out a breakfast is now as expensive as four eggs. However, no English breakfast is complete without at least one slice of beautiful black pudding.
Beans
Each fryup I serve receives approximately a third of a tin of beans, or 138 grams to be precise. That's roughly 150 beans with each meal. Some people don't like the tomato sauce running and mixing with other elements of the breakfast, so the beans come served in separate pots for your convenience.
What is a traditional English breakfast?
The traditional full breakfast usually includes sausages, eggs, bacon, mushrooms, beans, and sometimes black pudding. Toast or fried bread is usually served as a side-dish, and other popular additions are fried tomatoes, hash browns, and sometimes fried potatoes.
There are many ways of going about creating the perfect full breakfast. Some people prefer their eggs poached or scrambled. For the sake of practicality, I always fry my eggs, because scrambled eggs become cold too quickly, and poached eggs are too delicate to travel. For bacon, either streaky bacon or back bacon is popular. I find streaky bacon has a superior flavour, and cooks more evenly in the pan. There are many differing opinions on which type of mushroom to use. Most cafés use button mushrooms, but I find portobello mushrooms have a better flavour for a fryup, and develop more pleasingly in a frying pan. It is important to halve the tops of the mushrooms, as the concave nature of them means they will not cook evenly if they are left whole.
Regional variations
Many parts of the British Isles add their own regional speciality to the cooked breakfast, and this makes for some charming variety and creativity. In Scotland and Cornwall, cooks will sometimes use white pudding instead of black pudding. White pudding, or hog's pudding, has a beautiful texture and flavour, but is very difficult to obtain reliably. You may find it in Morrison's or at a speciality butcher's shop. In the Potteries area, using oatcakes is a popular addition, and in Wales, laverbread, a form of edible seaweed, can be added to the fryup. Again, finding a reliable supplier of these delicacies at reasonable prices is almost impossible away from these areas. You are welcome to add to, and create alternatives to the traditional English breakfast as you please, of course.
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