Our suggestions for what to cook this weekend include everything from recipes for a classic full English breakfast for a one-pan British fry-up, homemade sausage rolls and crispy salmon fillet with colcannon to perfect mushrooms on toast, classic fish pot pies baked in individual ramekins and beer battered fish and chips.
If you’re a first-time visitor to Grantourismo, What to Cook this Weekend is a weekly-ish series with suggestions for often easy, occasionally challenging, but always memorable weekend meals. Meal ideas might include dishes that we are cooking at home, which we think you might enjoy, as well as recipes that we’re developing and testing out for our cookbooks.
These recipes come from our Grantourismo recipes archives, which are heaving with thousands of recipes for dishes from around the world, beginning with recipes from our first series, The Dish, on the quintessential dishes of places we settled into when we launched Grantourismo with our 12 month global grand tour back on New Year’s Day 2010.
Many of our most popular recipes on Grantourismo are from that series, from our Moroccan Moroccan lamb tajine with prunes and almonds to this classic Toulouse cassoulet.
Before I share suggestions for what to cook this weekend, I have a favour to ask. Grantourismo is reader-supported. If you’ve enjoyed our recipes, please consider supporting Grantourismo and what we do here by buying us a coffee (we’ll use our coffee money to buy cooking ingredients for recipe testing) or making a donation to our epic, original Cambodian cookbook and culinary history on Patreon.
You could also buy something from our Grantourismo store for gifts for foodies, including fun reusable cloth face masks designed with Terence’s photography. Another way to support the site is by using our links to book accommodation, rent a car, buy travel insurance, book a tour on Get Your Guide.
We might earn a small commission from your purchases on sites, such as Amazon, and we have plenty of inspiration here in our round-ups of James Beard award-winning cookbooks, cookbooks by Australian chefs, classic cookbooks for serious cooks, cookbooks for culinary travellers, gifts for Asian food lovers, picnic lovers and travellers who love photography. Now let’s share our suggestions as to what to cook this weekend.
What to Cook This Weekend from Homemade Sausage Rolls to Perfect Fish and Chips
Here are our suggestions as to what to cook this weekend.
Saturday Breakfast – Full English Breakfast Recipe for a One-Pan British Fry-Up
My top recommendation for what to cook this weekend for Saturday breakfast is our full English breakfast recipe for a one-pan British fry-up for two to share – although if famished you could try tackling this on your own.
It’s this week’s edition of Weekend Eggs, our 12-year-old series of recipes for quintessential egg dishes from around the world, and I created this recipe with our British readers in mind, given the recent death of Queen Elizabeth II and today’s proclamation of a new monarch, King Charles III.
Also known as a classic English breakfast, traditional English breakfast, British fry-up, and English fry-up, this very British breakfast consists of a plate abundant with baked beans, fried eggs, bacon, mushrooms, tomatoes, sausages, and black pudding. It’s a comforting and filling breakfast, and also a fantastic hangover cure.
My full English breakfast recipe calls for each of the elements to be fried up or grilled separately, but they come together in a Dutch oven shakshouka style, which is then served at the table with plenty of toast and, if you like, sides of fried potatoes, bubble and squeak, and fried bread.
Tips: use Heinz baked beans for an authentic taste; a fish slice is handy so the black pudding doesn’t fall apart; we recommend one of these small single-egg frying pans to fry the eggs; and HP sauce and tomato sauce (ketchup) are also a must. We also like a squirt of chilli sauce, such as our homemade Sriracha.
Full English Breakfast Recipe for a One-Pan British Fry-Up for Two to Share
Saturday Lunch – Sausage Roll Recipe for Delicious Homemade Sausage Rolls
This sausage roll recipe for addictively delicious homemade sausage rolls couldn’t be more easy and it’s my suggestion for what to cook this weekend for Saturday lunch, in keeping with our British food theme. While they’re quintessentially Australian, sausage rolls like pies originated in Britain.
Why make homemade sausage rolls when you can go buy them from a bakery? Homemade sausage rolls are a breeze to make, you know what’s going in them, and you can easily tweak the recipe each time to your taste.
In Australia, sausage rolls are warming snacks when you’re at a chilly sports stadium watching footie in winter; they’re morning tea for ‘smoko’ (a break) for a hungry tradie working on a construction site; and they’re a party food staple for Aussie kids when you can serve mini-sausage rolls.
If you enjoy these classic sausage rolls, try making Terence’s Cambodian-inspired sausage rolls and meat pies, such as his sausage rolls with eggplant and pork based on the traditional Cambodian char-grilled eggplant and minced pork dish; Saraman curry sausage rolls and a curry beef pie made filled with the rich Cambodian Saraman curry, a relation of Thailand’s Massaman curry); a spicy pork minced pie filled with prahok k’tis, a rich pork mince, prahok, coconut cream, and pea eggplant dip; and a curried chicken pie inspired by the gently-spiced Cambodian chicken curry.
Sausage Roll Recipe – How to Make Delicious Homemade Sausage Rolls
Saturday Dinner – Salmon Fillet with Colcannon Recipe
I’m making this salmon fillet with colcannon recipe tonight. If you’re not familiar with colcannon, it’s a classic Irish mashed potato dish with kale or cabbage and spring onions, and can entertain other ingredients, such as bacon or pancetta.
We love colcannon with cabbage and, as far as I’m concerned, it’s one of our best cabbage recipes. If you love Terence’s creamy mashed potatoes recipe, you’re going to adore this colcannon.
Terence has added a brilliant cabbage side dish, too, Automata’s roasted red cabbage with bonito butter, but with the same Chinese cabbage that he uses in the colcannon.
Chef Clayton Wells’ recipe for cabbage is one of our favourite side dishes. It’s umami heaven and it’s one of the reasons that Wells became one of our favourite Sydney chefs after just one meal at his restaurant.
Terence also has some fantastic tips for a perfect crispy salmon skin in this recipe.
Salmon Fillet with Colcannon Recipe and How to Get a Perfect Crispy Salmon Skin
Sunday Breakfast – Perfect Mushrooms on Toast Recipe
Our perfect mushrooms on toast recipe makes the most delicious mushrooms sautéed with garlic and shallots in salted butter and olive oil, and finished with a dollop of sour cream and plenty of fresh fragrant herbs.
For perfect mushrooms on toast, mixed mushrooms are essential – any combination of button mushrooms, cremini, portobello, oyster mushrooms, shiitake, enoki, porcini, chanterelles etc – as much for the variety of flavours and textures as for the look of the dish.
I love aromatic dill but you can use flat-leaf parsley or your favourite herb. Pile it all onto toasted sourdough and generously sprinkle on some grated Parmigiano-Reggiano.
If you haven’t yet tried your hand at making sourdough, I strongly recommend that you do and we have an excellent compilation of Terence’s sourdough recipes and tips that form this guide to sourdough baking.
Tips: use a griddle pan to toast thick slices of sourdough bread or whatever delicious heavy loaf you have at hand, as much for those lovely black griddle marks as the smokiness, then use a silicon pastry brush or fibre pastry brush to brush some virgin olive oil on the slices or generous spreads of salted butter, slice each piece in half, then set them aside on serving plates.
Perfect Mushrooms on Toast Recipe with Fragrant Herbs and Parmigiano Reggiano
Sunday Lunch – Fish Pot Pie Recipe for Mini Mashed Potato and Salmon Pot Pies
This classic fish pot pie recipe makes mini mashed potato and creamy salmon pot pies baked in individual ramekins and it’s my suggestion for what to cook this weekend for Sunday lunch, as you can use last night’s leftover salmon and colcannon to make this dish.
Delicious as they are, these adorable salmon pot pies are also very versatile. You could replace the salmon with a white fish, combine types of fish, add prawns or mussels or both, and add spices such as nutmeg to the creamy salmon. Yum!
These little salmon pot pies may look simple but beneath the crispy cheesy lid are layers of buttery mashed potatoes infused with fresh fragrant herbs that sandwich a layer of chunky salmon pieces simmered in a rich creamy sauce. All these fish pot pies need is a classic garden salad on the side.
You’ll find more of our best salmon recipes here, including recipes for devilled eggs with smoked salmon and caviar, blini with smoked salmon, a salmon ceviche-style appetiser, fish soup with salmon, salmon potato salad, salmon pasta, and clay-pot salmon.
I’ll also be adding my easy salmon tray bake recipe to that collection. It makes incredibly delicious crispy skinned salmon fillets baked so that the skin crackles but the flesh remains moist, with roasted spring vegetables that are just-done so that they’re still fresh and crunchy. Perfect for an Easter lunch.
Fish Pot Pie Recipe for Mini Mashed Potato and Salmon Pot Pies with Crispy Melted Cheese
Sunday Dinner – Beer Battered Fish and Chips Recipe for Perfect Fish and Chips
This beer battered fish and chips recipe makes the perfect fish and chips for the classic takeaway that is an iconic dish for we Australians, as well as our New Zealander and British cousins – so iconic that there is a national fish and chips day in the UK that was celebrated this week on 4 September, which is FryDay.
For us, FryDay is just an excuse to eat fish and chips and share our recipe for the best beer battered fish and chips ever, even if we are a little late in sharing. Eating fish and chips, preferably by a beach, is intrinsic to our culinary culture.
Use this recipe, along with our hand cut potato chips recipe and easy homemade tartare sauce recipe and you’ll be enjoying your best fish and chips ever. What makes it the best?
This beer battered fish and chips recipe results in perfect fish and chips with the beer batter crunch we all love while keeping the fish fillets deliciously moist. The secret is that the heat of the fryer goes mostly into the batter rather than the fish itself and quickly forms a crunchy crust – every single time.
Best Beer Battered Fish and Chips Recipe for Perfect Fish and Chips
Please do let us know if you make any of our What to Cook this Weekend recipes in the comments below as we’d love to hear how our recipes turned out for you.
