Breakfast: the beginning of every day.

For some, breakfast is the most important meal as it’s the first thing you eat. For others, it’s something they could do without for simplicity’s sake or maybe due to time constraints. Either way, breakfast is how some choose to start their day.

As the school year progresses and classes become more and more intense, weekends become more important as they are breaks for recovery. There’s nothing better than a hearty meal to take the edge off the stress of daily life.

The full English breakfast is, in my opinion, a prime example of the epitome of a hearty breakfast. Consisting of buttered toast, fried or scrambled eggs, baked beans, seared tomatoes and mushrooms, bacon, sausages and hash browns, I can’t think of a better breakfast to indulge in.

While the full English breakfast normally features a special type of blood sausage called black pudding, I decided not to include it in the dish as I could not find it at my local butcher.

Let’s start with potatoes. I love potatoes. There are countless ways to cook them and they taste good no matter what. I debated on adding hash browns because they weren’t a part of a traditional full English breakfast but the opportunity to make over a pound of potatoes with the excuse that it “was for school” was too good to pass up.

The hash browns were pretty easy to make. I just mixed an egg, shredded potatoes, diced onions and flour to make the mixture and fried them for five minutes on each side. After pulling them out, I salted them and immediately placed them on the plate.

Golden and crispy, they had turned out perfect.

After placing some potato bread in the air fryer, I cleaned the pan and cooked some bacon until it was crispy, patted it dry with paper towels and plated it. Traditionally, the full English breakfast calls for back bacon, a leaner, more expensive cut than the normal, streaky bacon I had used. However, I decided to just use the bacon that was easier to find.

Leaving the bacon fat in the pan, I dropped in the sliced baby portobello mushrooms and cooked them til they softened and gained some color. After sprinkling with salt, I put them on the side of the plate.
After rewashing the pan, I added a tomato I had sliced in half face down on the pan to brown the surface, for around four minutes. Then, I took them out and seasoned them with salt and pepper.

While a Lincolnshire sausage would normally be used, I couldn’t find one when I was buying the ingredients for the dish, so I instead decided to just pick up some sausages that were widely available and still tasted amazing in the end.

As one of the last additions to the plate, I fried up some sunny-side-up eggs and placed them alongside the sausages before moving on to the final item: Heinz beans.

Heinz, a name known for their condiments, has become the staple brand for beans in a full English breakfast in the United Kingdom. With its slightly sweet and tart flavor, it brought a sort of contrast to the richness and saltiness of the dish. After heating up a container of Heinz beans, I added them into the middle of the plate, completing the dish.

As I portioned out the dish to my family, I noticed one small problem with the cooking process. Some of the different parts of the dish that I had made in the beginning, such as the hashbrowns, had cooled a bit by the time the dish had been finished. To prevent this, I would recommend either putting a lid on completed components or, for crispier additions, cooking them later on.

Furthermore, even though some of the ingredients used were pre-made, such as the sausage, the dish still took me around two hours to prepare.

Despite the dish’s shortcomings, I found the overall dish to be incredible. It didn’t feel too heavy even with the large amount of fat and oil. Also, the sheer versatility of this dish is unparalleled, with the ability to change various items without breaking the harmony the dish creates.

I would recommend this dish as a sort of celebratory meal instead of one that’s eaten regularly. Even though the dish doesn’t feel overwhelming, the fact remains that it isn’t exactly the healthiest of options due to its generous use of oil. But if you want to celebrate a certain date or make something special for someone, be it yourself, your family or your friends, then I would say it is well worth the time investment.