I understand that the shrooms in a full English are usually just this way, but literally speaking you can season the shit out of mushrooms with all sorts of flavorings.
The place we used to get breakfast (they had a big breakfast with double everything!) started putting herbs in the mushrooms. Absolute shite and ruined them.
Salt & cracked pepper, ideally the mushrooms cooked in butter with a bit of maillard happening.
Sausages fine with just a little tomato sauce(ketchup) or spicy tomato chutney.
This is not a full English due to the following issues or errors:
Fried eggs are ideal, poached acceptable, and some oddballs like scrambled. Boiled egg is not acceptable. There should be two eggs as standard, more if the breakfast is a 'large'.
It's missing baked beans, which should have been simmered until the sauce thickens into a syrup.
While cafes love to serve this kind of tomato that's only because it's easy to keep a pot of chopped, tinned tomatoes warm. If you're going tinned, they should be good quality whole plum tomatoes. But well-grilled fresh tomatoes are preferable. No cherries. No vine attached. Definitely no raw tomato.
It's missing the black pudding which elevates the humble fry-up into the glory that is a proper full English.
Experienced afficionados of the full English almost all prefer cooked sausages over raw ones.
The mushrooms look like they came in a tin. Ideally whole field or chestnut mushrooms shoud be used.
There seems to be a lack of hot buttered toast (with optional marmelade).
There is hearty debate amongst the governing body of the full English about whether or not hash browns are acceptable on a breakfast. Many declare them to be unwanted compared to, for example, bubble and squeak or a tattie scone, or even fried potatoes, or a fried slice for that matter. They go further and label them 'trash browns', 'American nonsense', or just 'shite'. Personally I don't mind them, and consider them to be an optional addition, but not a core requirement of the full English. There are many other optional additions, not to mention regional specialities which render an Ulster fry very different to a full Welsh or a full Scottish. Hogs pudding, white pudding, fruit pudding, haggis, Lorne sausage, potato farl, soda bread, laverbread, kidneys, etc.
There is also a hugely spirited disagreement over the serving of baked beans. There are, by-and-large, three schools of thought with regards the beans (not counting those poor,deluded fools who don't like them). Firstly there's the 'put the beans in a pot' faction who are scared of bean juice contaminating other ingredients. Secondly there are those who eschew the ramekin, considering them to be one of the ultimate signs of pretention. They insist that the beans should be on the plate, but segregated from the other ingredients by a barrier of sausages. Lastly, there is the sane and balanced group who believe that the beans should be put on the plate with no barrier, ideally in the middle. This group of illuminated Full Monty enjoyers recognise that the mixing of bean juice, tomato juice, and egg yolk forms the most perfect gravy of the gods. I, myself, am in the latter camp.
I am available for for keynote speeches on the subject should anyone be organising a full English conference.
I think that a full english isn't an exclusionary meal. I think there are a few factors it needs to be in the category of full english but that there are many variations and additions or subtractions that still count.
In my opinion the only things required for a full english are any 4 of the following:
fried eggs
sausages
bacon
beans
toast
Anything less is not "full" and anything more is a variation of the full english.
Hash browns? Sure! ulsterfry? Go for it! Mushrooms? Absolutely! Tomatoes (grilled of course) yes please! Black pudding (not for me) bring it on!
But there is no singular thing that makes it a full english, it just has to have enough of the core ingredients to meet the criteria.
What you describe is a mere fry-up. The required ingredients of a full English are eggs, bacon, sausage, black pudding, beans, and tomato. Six perfect ingredients.
There’s nothing wrong with a fry-up, mind you. But it’s not a full English without the six.
Historically there is no set version of a full english. What you describe is just your version. It will be, entirely, a social construct. This is why the full english varies so much, its different traditions in different areas and families being passed down, giving everyone a different vision of what it is.
Its similar to how everyone has their own christmas traditions, or how fish and chips in the north tend to be more traditionally served with gravy mushy peas and bread+butter. Whereas in the south, typically, they are sold with just ketchup or mayonnaise. But again, not exclusively. They only requirement is a fash and some chips. Everything else is just a variation of that but still counts.
This is why i belive that there only needs to be a few core ingredients for a full english to qualify as a full english. After that its all tradition and preference.
I tend to agree on that more flexible definition with a few core ingredients as baseline but it does seem to me that that core list needs to include at least one regional speciality item specific to the British Isles because I think that's what the "full" part is really referring to as opposed to just a "fry up" as the other bloke suggested. I think in general in England that's probably black pudding.
This thinking is because that minimum combination you listed is fairly common in a few places including Australia and while I don't speak from experience, I think with the exception of the beans if wouldn't be a totally strange or foreign combination in America either.
Its a fair point and i see where you are coming from but would it not also be fair to say a that a "fry up" is a colloquialism meaning full english? I would ask, where does a fry up cease to be a fry up? Whats the minimum requirements? Is eggs on toast a fry up? Eggs and sausage and beans? Sausages and bacon and toast? Or all of the above?
Or does fry up refer to how its cooked, in that it all goes in the pan? I tend to grill my bacon and sausages, fry my eggs and mushrooms, toaster my toast, microwave my beans. Is that not longer a fry up because its not all in the frying pan?
As to your point about the ingredients being common in a few places like Australia and America. Is it not fair to say that they adopted the meal and that explains the commonality? Like in england a curry is a practically a national dish, but its adopted from indian cuisine. We make it slightly differently to its country of origin but at its core the ingredients required to call it a curry are not uncommon anywhere in the world.
A long time ago I was in old Blighty for the first time for work and the locals took care of me foodwise. I remember getting all the usual "English food is terrible" remarks before going and I didn't know any better so I was worried when I arrived.
Everything was delicious, I loved all of it. The full English especially, that could power you through supper.
Considering the quality of the cooking points to it being committed by an American black pudding likely wasn't available as it's illegal in the United States.
Wikipedia tells me blood sausages are available in Puerto Rico, Wisconsin, Maine, Michigan, the San Francisco Bay Area, Fresno, Santa Rosa, and of course, Cajun Louisiana.
A strong position to take on a post about a full English.
Veggie versions abound, though, replacing pork sausages with Glamorgan sausages and bacon with halloumi or some such. And you can get vegan black pudding too, though I've never tried it. A good veggie version is fine eating.
Once you go full vegan though, it gets a bit harder since you also need to fake the eggs (and I've only heard of people doing tofu-based scrambled 'eggs') and faking or swapping out the bacon and the sausages and the black pudding so by that stage I'd be wondering why I was trying to recreate such a meat forward meal.
The lack of beans and black pudding is especially egregious. If England is giving up on free speech they could at least go after these faux english breakfast frauds.
It might not sound appetising but it tastes great. Try it sometime. And in a full English is where it’s best with a little egg, beans and tomato. Lush.
I see no problems with cooking meals with sunlight. (...as we say here in the solarpunk instance)
However, I do see the practical limitations what comes to attempting to cook meals with sunlight in the UK. I have heard the weather is often not favourable.
i mean the thing with clouds is that they largely just scatter the sunlight, and i'm pretty sure i've seen a reflector design specifically for that situation which works remarkably well.
Was that /s ? You can see the cooking marks on the meats, potatoes are crispy, egg is obviously cooked, the tomatoes may have started out a whole tomatoes; you typically roast them in the oven till they are ready to pop open.
But may canned tomatoes in this image.
Yeah this whole thread feels like either I've been dropped into a parallel universe or there's something wrong with my monitor settings. Is it really that weird to not want your food totally blackened all over? The bacon and hash browns in particular look like they was taken out at exactly the right moment, just as they're showing the first spots of browning. I wonder if maybe the details aren't showing up clearly on mobile devices or something and people are reacting to that?
I'm not judging anyone who likes their food overcooked, but there's no need to be a dick to people who like to taste the meat not the heat.
Yeah, I get it. I like well cooked stuff myself, but lots of people like it how it is in the photo.. At least from what I saw growing up will full English
Currently in London on vacation, can confirm that most of the items served to me in the full English breakfast I had were barely cooked, the corned beef was cold out of a can. Do not recommend.
Corned beef? What in Gods name would that be doing in a Full English?
A proper Full English is served scalding hot on a plate that’s nearly glowing red. The egg is fried and has brown crispy bits, the bacon fat is browned but the meat is tender and the sausages are anything between brown and dark brown. The beans, well, if you aren’t mad you ask for it without those because they’re disgusting. The bread should be either toasted & buttered or fried in the bacon fat.
Deranged people will add HP sauce or, heaven forbid, tomato ketchup, but it is best to offer such people pity and support in the hope that they will one day recover.
I'm from the countryside in north of England and have lived in London at points for many years of my life. London is generally the worst for proper British food, in my experience. The best fry ups, fish and chips and all that you're gunna get is in small towns or villages where the place itself is bare bones and no frills. Far cheaper too
That said, I'll of course take most other cuisine over our own. I do like foods that require a good amount of seasoning and some actual spice. Our cuisine is really helped by those too as I see it. But most people here seem to draw the line at black pepper, sadly
I definitely like my hashbrowns low and slow, not dry and crispy when I make them in the air fryer, and they come out like that color. Lightly crisped on the outside and fully cooked on the inside. They are just potatoes after all.
The utter lack of seasoning make me think this is authentic.
Heat is classified as a seasoning now.
Didn't use enough of that either. Only the bacon looks like it has seen a grill or pan.
I mean, it kind of can be
The seasoning is the bacon grease this all cooks in. Besides salt and pepper for the egg, that's generally all this needs.
a worrying amount of people seem to only consider habanero peppers as flavourful, anything else is unseasoned
Haha, yes. See this all the time online. Like even the idea of just having a nice rare ribeye without a tonne of A1 sauce on it is anathema to them.
Those are typically college kids who still don't know how to cook
i feel like old men do it a lot as well, presumably part being macho and maybe part that testosterone makes taste buds decline earlier?
What sort of seasoning would you require on sausages or mushrooms..?
I understand that the shrooms in a full English are usually just this way, but literally speaking you can season the shit out of mushrooms with all sorts of flavorings.
You can but often you don't because they're delish as is
The place we used to get breakfast (they had a big breakfast with double everything!) started putting herbs in the mushrooms. Absolute shite and ruined them.
Salt & cracked pepper, ideally the mushrooms cooked in butter with a bit of maillard happening. Sausages fine with just a little tomato sauce(ketchup) or spicy tomato chutney.
Salt on mushrooms, herbs on sausages.
Bangers sometimes have herbs in them. Not these ones - they look cheap, though that can be a mood in itself.
Those look like canned champion mushroom, they have salt in them in my experience. What sort of herbs would you put on the sausages?
Fair enough. I was referring to mushrooms in general.
Mixed herbs, for example like these: https://www.tesco.com/groceries/en-GB/products/296921655
Sprinkle a little bit on the top while frying, really enhance the taste.
Always can add some brown sauce.
This is not a full English due to the following issues or errors:
There is hearty debate amongst the governing body of the full English about whether or not hash browns are acceptable on a breakfast. Many declare them to be unwanted compared to, for example, bubble and squeak or a tattie scone, or even fried potatoes, or a fried slice for that matter. They go further and label them 'trash browns', 'American nonsense', or just 'shite'. Personally I don't mind them, and consider them to be an optional addition, but not a core requirement of the full English. There are many other optional additions, not to mention regional specialities which render an Ulster fry very different to a full Welsh or a full Scottish. Hogs pudding, white pudding, fruit pudding, haggis, Lorne sausage, potato farl, soda bread, laverbread, kidneys, etc.
There is also a hugely spirited disagreement over the serving of baked beans. There are, by-and-large, three schools of thought with regards the beans (not counting those poor,deluded fools who don't like them). Firstly there's the 'put the beans in a pot' faction who are scared of bean juice contaminating other ingredients. Secondly there are those who eschew the ramekin, considering them to be one of the ultimate signs of pretention. They insist that the beans should be on the plate, but segregated from the other ingredients by a barrier of sausages. Lastly, there is the sane and balanced group who believe that the beans should be put on the plate with no barrier, ideally in the middle. This group of illuminated Full Monty enjoyers recognise that the mixing of bean juice, tomato juice, and egg yolk forms the most perfect gravy of the gods. I, myself, am in the latter camp.
I am available for for keynote speeches on the subject should anyone be organising a full English conference.
Love that you took the time to write this out as a comment on a shitpost. That’s dedication!
Some things matter!
I think that a full english isn't an exclusionary meal. I think there are a few factors it needs to be in the category of full english but that there are many variations and additions or subtractions that still count.
In my opinion the only things required for a full english are any 4 of the following:
Anything less is not "full" and anything more is a variation of the full english.
Hash browns? Sure! ulsterfry? Go for it! Mushrooms? Absolutely! Tomatoes (grilled of course) yes please! Black pudding (not for me) bring it on!
But there is no singular thing that makes it a full english, it just has to have enough of the core ingredients to meet the criteria.
What you describe is a mere fry-up. The required ingredients of a full English are eggs, bacon, sausage, black pudding, beans, and tomato. Six perfect ingredients.
There’s nothing wrong with a fry-up, mind you. But it’s not a full English without the six.
Historically there is no set version of a full english. What you describe is just your version. It will be, entirely, a social construct. This is why the full english varies so much, its different traditions in different areas and families being passed down, giving everyone a different vision of what it is.
Its similar to how everyone has their own christmas traditions, or how fish and chips in the north tend to be more traditionally served with gravy mushy peas and bread+butter. Whereas in the south, typically, they are sold with just ketchup or mayonnaise. But again, not exclusively. They only requirement is a fash and some chips. Everything else is just a variation of that but still counts.
This is why i belive that there only needs to be a few core ingredients for a full english to qualify as a full english. After that its all tradition and preference.
Well, you're very welcome to continue enjoying your fry-ups.
And you are very welcome to enjoy your specific version of a full english. 😀
I tend to agree on that more flexible definition with a few core ingredients as baseline but it does seem to me that that core list needs to include at least one regional speciality item specific to the British Isles because I think that's what the "full" part is really referring to as opposed to just a "fry up" as the other bloke suggested. I think in general in England that's probably black pudding.
This thinking is because that minimum combination you listed is fairly common in a few places including Australia and while I don't speak from experience, I think with the exception of the beans if wouldn't be a totally strange or foreign combination in America either.
Its a fair point and i see where you are coming from but would it not also be fair to say a that a "fry up" is a colloquialism meaning full english? I would ask, where does a fry up cease to be a fry up? Whats the minimum requirements? Is eggs on toast a fry up? Eggs and sausage and beans? Sausages and bacon and toast? Or all of the above?
Or does fry up refer to how its cooked, in that it all goes in the pan? I tend to grill my bacon and sausages, fry my eggs and mushrooms, toaster my toast, microwave my beans. Is that not longer a fry up because its not all in the frying pan?
As to your point about the ingredients being common in a few places like Australia and America. Is it not fair to say that they adopted the meal and that explains the commonality? Like in england a curry is a practically a national dish, but its adopted from indian cuisine. We make it slightly differently to its country of origin but at its core the ingredients required to call it a curry are not uncommon anywhere in the world.
This is poetry. If you ever do a Ted talk please let me know.
A long time ago I was in old Blighty for the first time for work and the locals took care of me foodwise. I remember getting all the usual "English food is terrible" remarks before going and I didn't know any better so I was worried when I arrived.
Everything was delicious, I loved all of it. The full English especially, that could power you through supper.
You rarely have a full English followed by a heavy lunch. More likely a heavy nap.
Or a light cardiac arrest.
Considering the quality of the cooking points to it being committed by an American black pudding likely wasn't available as it's illegal in the United States.
Are you sure?
Wikipedia tells me blood sausages are available in Puerto Rico, Wisconsin, Maine, Michigan, the San Francisco Bay Area, Fresno, Santa Rosa, and of course, Cajun Louisiana.
Should be illegal everywhere
Not really it's delicious. And eaten in one form or another in all parts of the world.
🤢
I’m guessing you’ve never tried it. It’s a glorious food stuff and the full English is its perfect context.
Accurate, meat is universally gross
A strong position to take on a post about a full English.
Veggie versions abound, though, replacing pork sausages with Glamorgan sausages and bacon with halloumi or some such. And you can get vegan black pudding too, though I've never tried it. A good veggie version is fine eating.
Once you go full vegan though, it gets a bit harder since you also need to fake the eggs (and I've only heard of people doing tofu-based scrambled 'eggs') and faking or swapping out the bacon and the sausages and the black pudding so by that stage I'd be wondering why I was trying to recreate such a meat forward meal.
You definitely need the sausage to act as a breakwater
The lack of beans and black pudding is especially egregious. If England is giving up on free speech they could at least go after these faux english breakfast frauds.
The black pudding doesn't sound appetising. My grandma never made. We would have weetabix some mornings.
It might not sound appetising but it tastes great. Try it sometime. And in a full English is where it’s best with a little egg, beans and tomato. Lush.
Thats a good roast.
Come on, that's a Full English Breakfast, not a Roast.
DONT RUIN MY DOUBLE ENTENDRE WITH YOUR TRUTHS AND FACTS
I'm not English but I thought there should be toast and beans. The sausage looks anemic.
Also not British... Boiled egg? 🤔
Fried egg is more common, no idea why they did boiled
Seems like something they'd do.
Yeah, what is with that sausage? It looks absolutely disgusting.
nah probably cooked with a hair dryer
They placed it under the car with the engine running for five minutes
And it's an EV
that's even more specific, I love it lol
Boiled, I'd assume
Don't be ridiculous. Where would they get sunlight in England?
They'd steal it from the Irish and the Scots, just like everything else.
We already did. That’s why they’re both permanently shrouded in cloud.
Savagest comment thread
No one talking about a Fucking boiled egg?
That alone indicates the trolling nature of the post.
Chuck it in the oven for ten minutes, no drama at all.
Then pre-book the following day off work with a dodgy stomach.
A skilled vet could still save this pig!
Lmfaoooo
I see no problems with cooking meals with sunlight. (...as we say here in the solarpunk instance)
However, I do see the practical limitations what comes to attempting to cook meals with sunlight in the UK. I have heard the weather is often not favourable.
You need a lot of mirrors and/or lenses to cook something using sunlight. Unless you're in Arizona, then just stick your skillet out the window.
Yeah with good luck you could have enough energy, but... who's gonna ever rely on the sun being available when you're hungry?
Solar panels, sure, as they're there all the time, and not just when youre hungry.
But solar cooking, yeah, not so much at these latitudes
i mean the thing with clouds is that they largely just scatter the sunlight, and i'm pretty sure i've seen a reflector design specifically for that situation which works remarkably well.
brand new sentence
Sausages are still oinking a little
Brekkele is hessian German for vomiting
The hog penises definitely were cooked with sunlight.
And if the sun don't come
you get a tan from
standing in the English rain
Cooked? Looks more like raw ingredients.
Was that /s ? You can see the cooking marks on the meats, potatoes are crispy, egg is obviously cooked, the tomatoes may have started out a whole tomatoes; you typically roast them in the oven till they are ready to pop open. But may canned tomatoes in this image.
That's not cooking. That's just exposing ingredients to heat.
I guess some call heating food cooking 😀
Yeah this whole thread feels like either I've been dropped into a parallel universe or there's something wrong with my monitor settings. Is it really that weird to not want your food totally blackened all over? The bacon and hash browns in particular look like they was taken out at exactly the right moment, just as they're showing the first spots of browning. I wonder if maybe the details aren't showing up clearly on mobile devices or something and people are reacting to that?
I'm not judging anyone who likes their food overcooked, but there's no need to be a dick to people who like to taste the meat not the heat.
Yeah, I get it. I like well cooked stuff myself, but lots of people like it how it is in the photo.. At least from what I saw growing up will full English
Cooked via suggestion
Use of the word "brekky" should be punishable by transport to Australia
Im not sure if thats because the grammar or because Aussies actually call it brekky...
That would have been a lot easier than cheaper for me.
looks... raw...
"Choccy brekky holibobs" -> 🗑️
What pillock has turned a tin of chopped tomatoes on
Currently in London on vacation, can confirm that most of the items served to me in the full English breakfast I had were barely cooked, the corned beef was cold out of a can. Do not recommend.
Corned beef? Sounds like they were playing a trick on the tourist.
Monty Python has led me to expect Spam.
"Baked beans are off." "Could I have Spam instead..."
Corned beef? What in Gods name would that be doing in a Full English? A proper Full English is served scalding hot on a plate that’s nearly glowing red. The egg is fried and has brown crispy bits, the bacon fat is browned but the meat is tender and the sausages are anything between brown and dark brown. The beans, well, if you aren’t mad you ask for it without those because they’re disgusting. The bread should be either toasted & buttered or fried in the bacon fat. Deranged people will add HP sauce or, heaven forbid, tomato ketchup, but it is best to offer such people pity and support in the hope that they will one day recover.
I'm from the countryside in north of England and have lived in London at points for many years of my life. London is generally the worst for proper British food, in my experience. The best fry ups, fish and chips and all that you're gunna get is in small towns or villages where the place itself is bare bones and no frills. Far cheaper too
That said, I'll of course take most other cuisine over our own. I do like foods that require a good amount of seasoning and some actual spice. Our cuisine is really helped by those too as I see it. But most people here seem to draw the line at black pepper, sadly
Wtf? Corned beef? Are you in one of the American cities that are named London rather than the capital of the uk?
Nah, not enough high fructose corn syrup.
I wish, the chip shops on the other hand have been great.
Chip shops in London are shit. Most don’t even bother to remove the skin and bones, and the batter is wet. It’s like they’re doing it on purpose.
Lol did you accidentally search for something like 'where to get the worst English breakfast in London'?
Did you get it from a fancy place or a greasy spoon?
My sister who lives in London took us to The Full Monty Cafe for the meal.
Not a great endorsement
That's a shame, that place looks good!
Eww, out of the can?
Everybody hated it
I love a loaded breakfast, especially before working in the garage or hauling things around.
Some people don't seem to appreciate a hearty meal. How sad.
Full English, Bleu rare
They don't have sunlight in England
Criminal. Not even 5th English.
You sick evil bastard!
Gross, I'll stick to a bigass plate full of tofu scramble.
I don't get it. Is the joke that this looks undercooked? This looks perfectly normally cooked to me, is it an American thing?
Mushrooms - straight out of the can. Sausage and bacon - raw / smoked. I don't need to explain which color hash BROWNS should have usually right.
Not an American thing.
I definitely like my hashbrowns low and slow, not dry and crispy when I make them in the air fryer, and they come out like that color. Lightly crisped on the outside and fully cooked on the inside. They are just potatoes after all.
Everything else on that plate looks like ass.
definitely undercooked, especially the sausages and hash browns