What Does Britain Eat For Breakfast?

Every day across Britain, people are waking up to the smell of bacon frying, hot buttered toast, lazily-poured bowls of cereal, freshly-brewed coffee and maybe even the occasional toaster waffle or pancake. Wherever you live in the UK, it’s likely that these items are staples of your breakfast table, but dig a little deeper into your area’s heritage and you might just uncover some tasty regional specialties.

You might already eat them on a regular basis, which is great! But if you don’t, you could be about to discover your new favourite breakfast food.

A proper full English breakfast isn’t complete without a good sausage. Several different British regions have their own sausage specialties – try saying that ten times as fast as you can – but few are more distinctive than the Lincolnshire sausage, which has a strong sage flavour.

Serve Lincolnshire sausages with bacon, eggs – however you like them in the morning – beans, mushrooms and tomatoes for a hearty fry-up at the weekends. For an ‘on the go’ breakfast in the middle of the week, use them in the sausage and bacon breakfast muffin recipe from Cakes by Shelly.

It can get cold up north, so it’s no surprise that Scotland’s traditional breakfast is a warming bowl of porridge. You can’t get much more simple than oats with hot water or milk to set you up for the day ahead, and porridge is an incredibly filling and nutritious breakfast that should keep you satisfied until midday (let’s not get into the regional debate about whether it’s lunch or dinnertime!)

You can of course jazz up your porridge by adding berries or sliced banana to get some extra fruit into your system, or use a flavoured milk or syrup to add a sweeter taste. For a really tasty autumnal treat that will satisfy your sweet tooth early in the day so you’re not tempted to reach for the biscuit barrel later on, try Hungry Healthy Happy’s recipe for pumpkin pie porridge – perfect for the time of year.

Black pudding is also known as blood sausage and is particularly popular in the Black Country, as well as in the north – especially in Bury, Greater Manchester, where it is regarded as something of a delicacy.

Some people are a bit squeamish about black pudding, but if you fancy giving it a go with your breakfast, slice it into discs of about 1cm thick before frying on both sides for around four minutes each. Serve with a full English, or if you don’t want to lose its flavour next to other meats, keep it simple and just have it with scrambled eggs or fried tomatoes.

White pudding is particularly popular in Ireland, but also in Northumberland and Scotland. It’s a bit different to black pudding as it is made from pork, as well as suet, oatmeal, fat and bits of bread, which are squeezed together to make what’s basically a big sausage.

Enjoy white pudding as part of a traditional full Irish breakfast, complete with bacon, sausages, black and white pudding, fried veg, eggs and potatoes. Homemade soda bread will add an even more authentic touch and give you something to mop up your runny yolks with.

Staffordshire is another part of the UK with its own breakfast specialty – the oatcake. A bit like a cross between an oaty pancake and a tortilla wrap, Staffordshire oatcakes are yet another great accompaniment to a full English. Try making your own with this recipe from Tinned Tomatoes. They work brilliantly with both sweet and savoury fillings, so choose from bacon and egg or chocolatey spread – if you can’t decide, why not have a two-course oatcake breakfast so you can find your favourite for next time?!

Laverbread, or bara lawr – as it is called in Welsh – is not actually bread at all, but a kind of edible seaweed. Confused? Well, laver is a type of seaweed that is boiled before being pureed or minced, coated in oatmeal, then fried. It’s usually eaten on toast and can be an acquired taste, but it’s certainly worth a try!

Neil Cooks Grigson decided to make traditional laverbread as a sort of dumpling substitute for vegetable soup, getting in on the ‘brinner’ (that’s breakfast for dinner – we’re sorry, it doesn’t work with ‘tea’!) trend.

You could use any of these regional breakfast specialties as part of a brinner recipe – black pudding with scallops is a particular favourite, and a good old fry-up works at any time of day.