English Breakfast
Serves 4 Time 35 minutes Ingredients 7 Steps 14
The traditional English breakfast is ubiquitous the world over. Cafés and hotels all around the world offer a version, often far removed from what might be considered conventional.
Ingredients
- 4 rashers of bacon (smoked bacon without too much fat is best, e.g. smoked back bacon)
- 4 eggs
- 4 English-style pork sausages
- 4 medium-sized tomatoes, halved around the equator
- 400 g mushrooms, sliced
- 4–8 slices of bread (traditionally white)
- 1 tin baked beans (optional)
Steps
- Heat broiler to medium. Cook sausages under it, turning frequently, 10–15 minutes.
- Cover base of frying pan with about 1 cm water. Heat on high until boiling. Break eggs in carefully (cooking rings may be placed in first). When water heats again, turn to very gentle simmer. Spoon water over egg tops a few times. Cook 8–10 minutes, until white is soft but cooked and yolk runny.
- Put halved tomatoes under broiler with sausages. Cook about 6 minutes.
- If using, heat baked beans in saucepan over medium heat, about 5 minutes.
- Heat very small amount of oil in pan. Fry mushrooms until soft, about 4 minutes.
- Put bacon under grill with sausages and tomatoes. Cook about 2 minutes per side, longer for crispier bacon; about 4 minutes total.
- While bacon cooks, toast bread until golden.
- Serve eggs, bacon, mushrooms, sausage, tomato and beans on piping hot plates. Serve toast separately, with butter and jam, and hot tea with milk.
- Start toasting bread before cooking the rest, 2 slices per person. Butter heavily with real butter. Place 4 plates on bottom oven shelf and one on top. Set oven to lowest heat.
- Melt lard in large frying pan, about 1 cm deep. Brown sausage over high heat. Lower heat. Cook sausage about 4 minutes. Leave in pan. Add bacon (2 strips per person). Cook to taste, flipping regularly: 2–3 minutes for pink, 4–6 for darker red with crispy fat. Transfer bacon to warmed dish on top oven shelf.
- Add mushrooms and tomatoes to pan. Heat tin of baked beans in small pot on separate burner. After 2–4 minutes, transfer mushrooms to oven with bacon. Transfer tomato then or a little later.
- When sausages are dark brown, push to side of pan. Break egg into fat. Push hot fat over yolk with spatula until it bubbles but is still liquid, about 1 minute. Set egg on each warmed plate. Add sausage, bacon and mushrooms. Add beans last. Serve with buttered toast on separate plate.
- If using black pudding, add to fat with bacon. Remove before eggs.
- For fried slice, add bread slice (whole or cut) to leftover fat. Fry lightly, flip, repeat. Or fry bread in vegetable oil in separate pan. Place fried egg on top of whole slice.
Notes from the original
- You can increase the number of eggs per person if desired.
- If you can't cope with preparing everything all at once (or don't have enough pans / rings), it is possible to keep all of the items warm in a preheated oven, so you can just cook each item in turn and keep it warm until needed. Try not to keep the eggs warm for too long before serving though, as the yolks may harden.
Source. Adapted from “Cookbook:English Breakfast” by Wikibooks contributors, revision of 2025-06-08, licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Changes. Steps rewritten into short commands. Introduction shortened. Wiki formatting removed. This adapted recipe is shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Photo. English Breakfast nic.jpg by André Zahn, CC BY-SA 2.0 de, via Wikimedia. Resized; otherwise unchanged.