Our full English breakfast recipe makes a one-pan British fry-up to share. If famished you could certainly try tackling this on your own, but it will easily feed two or four people depending how hungry you all are. A traditional English breakfast consists of a plate of fried eggs, baked beans, fried bacon, mushrooms, tomatoes, sausages, and black pudding. Our take on the classic English fry-up is finished in a Dutch oven shakshuka-style.
This week’s edition of Weekend Eggs, our long-running recipe series for quintessential egg dishes from around the world, which we launched way back in 2010 with our yearlong global grand tour, makes our take on a full English breakfast recipe for a very traditional British breakfast with a twist.
Also called a classic English breakfast, traditional English breakfast, British fry-up, and English fry-up, this very British breakfast consists of a plate that’s abundant with baked beans, fried eggs, bacon, mushrooms, tomatoes, sausages, and black pudding. It’s a comforting and filling breakfast, and it’s also a fantastic hangover cure.
My full English breakfast recipe calls for each of the elements to be fried up or grilled, but it comes together in a Dutch oven and is presented shakshuka-style then served at the table with plenty of toast and, if you like, sides of fried potatoes, bubble and squeak, and fried bread.
We’re resuming Weekend Eggs after a short hiatus, so over coming months you can expect plenty of new egg recipes for breakfast eggs, brunch eggs, lunch eggs, and breakfast for dinner eggs, from places we’ve lived in, travelled to and spent time in. We only publish recipes from cuisines and places with which we have a personal connection.
If you’re visiting us for the first time, we started Weekend Eggs back in 2010 when we launched Grantourismo with a yearlong global grand tour aimed at promoting slow, local and experiential travel, more sustainable, ethical, engaging, and immersive forms of travel.
On that 12-month trip we spent two weeks in each destination, staying in apartment rentals and holiday homes to get an insight into how locals lived, and in each place we settled, we explored the local food, connected with local cooks and chefs, and learnt to cook local specialties, which we shared in a series called The Dish, as well as Weekend Eggs.
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Full English Breakfast Recipe for a One-Pan British Fry-Up
My full English breakfast recipe will make you a one-dish British fry-up for two to share – although if hungry (or hungover!) you could certainly try to tackle this on your own, and if serving it for guests you can double or triple or quadruple ingredients, but you’ll need to use the Dutch oven itself, rather than the Dutch oven lid, which we use here, or casserole dishes.
While it’s best known as a traditional British breakfast, the classic English fry-up is also a very typical Australian weekend breakfast. When I was growing up in Sydney as a child, Mum and Dad would often make a fry-up together on Sundays, on holidays and on family camping trips.
On camping trips, Dad would take on breakfast fry-up duties as he’d cook it over an open fire using a combination of a portable flat grill plate and an enormous and very heavy Dutch oven that I remember Dad buying at a camping gear cum army supplies shop, where we also bought our tents and sleeping bags.
It was the memory of that, and some of our favourite eggs dishes baked in tomato sauce, such as the Middle Eastern shakshuka, which inspired my take on the full English breakfast recipe.
Tips to Making this Full English Breakfast Recipe for a One-Pan British Fry-Up
I have some important tips to making our full English breakfast recipe beginning with one of the key ingredients, baked beans. We recommend that you use Heinz baked beans for an authentic taste.
Most home-cooks wouldn’t touch their baked beans, serving them as is, straight from the can, however, I like to add a very non-traditional addition of chilli powder to add a little warmth and flavour.
Baked beans are really the basis of a classic British fry-up and they’re literally the foundation of my take on the full English breakfast, as the beans go in the Dutch oven first, and then the other ingredients go on top.
If you don’t have a Dutch oven, this is a good excuse to invest in one. While the much-coveted enamel-coated Le Creuset Dutch oven has been partly responsible for the Dutch oven craze of recent years – and is well worth the investment; they’ll last forever – you don’t need to spend a small fortune. The more affordable Lodge Dutch oven is a solid choice.
Do heat the oven at the start and slide the Dutch oven onto the top shelf, a lightly greased oven tray onto the middle shelf, and oven-safe plates on the bottom shelf, in a warmer drawer, or on top of the oven to warm them up, as there’s nothing worse than a cold English breakfast.
I have to confess that I cook each of the elements separately in a round flat bottomed wok, because I cook almost everything in a cook, but you’ll probably want to use a frying pan, griddle pan, flat grill plate, or skillet.
Try to source classic British-style pork sausages from a good butcher, which is easier said than done and next to impossible for us. If you can’t, use your favourite sausages. The north African shakshouka, also written as chakchouka, was my inspiration for the presentation and Moroccan merguez sausages, while non-traditional, would work really well.
Make sure to use a slotted spoon to scoop the bacon out of the pan, as you want to save that bacon fat to cook everything else in, beginning with the mushrooms. We use brown mushrooms here, as the various Asian style mushrooms wouldn’t work.
While you’re frying the mushrooms in the bacon fat, it’s still important to drizzle them with a little extra virgin olive oil and season them with quality sea salt and freshly ground cracked black pepper.
Traditionally, plump, ripe red tomatoes are called for, but green tomatoes would be great, the crunch adding a nice contrast in texture and flavour.
Take care with the black pudding as it can easily fall apart – I find a fish slice is perfect for handling it gently – and if you can’t source British-style black pudding (blood sausage), look for French boudin noir, which is what we get here in Cambodia.
We use one of these small single-egg frying pans and fry the eggs, not only to maintain the round shape, but also to control the doneness of the eggs, which you can’t do with egg rings in a larger pan.
We like to cook the whites but leave the yolks soft and runny, partly because that’s how we prefer them, but also because if you need to leave the finished dish in the oven for a while before serving, they shouldn’t over-cook if you leave the oven on low.
When you’re ready to eat, take the Dutch oven to the table, sprinkle on the chopped fresh flat leaf parsley at the last minute, and serve with plenty of buttered toast, salt and pepper, HP sauce and tomato sauce (ketchup). We also like a squirt of chilli sauce, such as our homemade Sriracha.
Other traditional inclusions for a classic British fry-up are potatoes fried in bacon fat and bubble and squeak, which you could serve as sides. Made in the Dutch Oven lid my full English breakfast recipe makes enough for two, but if you’re feeding more, use the Dutch oven itself.
If you enjoy cooking with a Dutch oven, do browse this compilation of our best Dutch oven recipes.
Full English Breakfast Recipe for a One-Pan British Fry-Up
Ingredients
- 1 tbsp neutral cooking oil
- 800 g tins Heinz baked beans
- ¼ tsp chilli powder – optional
- 2 pork sausages
- 4 rashers smoked bacon - sliced into 1cm-wide pieces
- 10 mushrooms - cleaned and sliced
- 2 tsp extra virgin olive oil
- 1 tsp sea salt
- 1 tsp ground fresh cracked black pepper
- 2 medium-sized tomatoes - sliced in half
- 1 black pudding sausage - thickly sliced
- 2 large free-range eggs
- 2 tbsp flat leaf parsley - roughly chopped
Serve with
- pepper, HP sauce, tomato sauce (ketchup), chilli sauce, and toast or fried bread
Instructions
- Heat the oven to 220°C (428°F), slide a Dutch oven onto the top shelf, a lightly greased oven tray onto the middle shelf, and plates into a warmer drawer or on top of the oven to warm up.
- In a medium-sized pot, heat the Heinz baked beans on the stove, stirring in our non-traditional addition of chilli powder to add warmth and flavour if you like. Once hot and bubbling, transfer the baked beans to the Dutch oven.
- Heat a frying pan, griddle pan, flat grill plate or skillet, brush sparingly with the neutral cooking oil and fry the pork sausages until cooked and golden. Transfer the sausages to a cutting board and slice them into bite-size pieces. Pull out the Dutch oven, evenly distribute the sliced sausages, using a fork to push them beneath the surface of the baked beans, and slide the Dutch oven back into the oven.
- Fry the bacon pieces until crispy (or done to your liking), then use a slotted spoon to scoop out the bacon, saving the bacon fat to cook everything else in. Transfer the bacon to the oven tray, sliding it back into the oven to keep warm.
- Fry the mushrooms in the bacon fat, first drizzling a teaspoon of olive oil over them, and sprinkling on half the salt and pepper, frying the mushrooms on both sides until golden-brown. When done, transfer them to the oven tray with the bacon.
- Drizzle another teaspoon of olive oil onto the sliced part of the tomatoes, sprinkle on some salt and pepper, place the sliced side of the tomatoes face-down on the pan or grill and fry for a few minutes until brown. Turn the tomatoes over to cook the other side for a few minutes until tender, then transfer them to the oven tray.
- Fry the slices of black pudding for a couple of minutes each side, taking care so that they don’t break apart, and use a fish slice to carefully transfer the slices to the oven tray. At the same time, pull the Dutch oven out of the oven.
- Use a clean small single-egg frying pan to fry the eggs one at a time until the whites are cooked and yolk remains soft and runny, carefully sliding each egg as cooked onto the baked beans in the Dutch oven.
- Remove the oven tray and arrange each of the ingredients – the crispy bacon pieces, brown mushrooms, tomato halves, and black pudding slices – around the fried eggs. If not eating immediately, return the Dutch Oven to the oven to keep warm.
- When ready to serve, sprinkle the chopped fresh flat leaf parsley leaves on top and serve at the table with buttered toast, salt and pepper, HP sauce, tomato sauce (ketchup) and chilli sauce, and optional sides such as potatoes fried in bacon fat and/or bubble and squeak.
Nutrition
Please do let us know in the comments below if you make my full English breakfast recipe presented shakshhuka style as we’d love to know how it turns out for you.
This looked so good I had to make it for brunch yesterday. I did have some leftover roast potatoes so I fried them in duck fat as a side. So good!
Cheers!
Duck fat… drooling… So pleased you enjoyed it, Mike. Thanks so much for taking the time to drip by and let us know :)