RealGravy

Regional British and Irish Gravies

Gravy for a Full English

A quick, dark breakfast gravy made in the fry pan with mushroom and tomato juices, for pouring over sausages, bacon and fried bread.

  • Contains meat
  • breakfast
  • full english
  • cafe
  • quick
  • pan gravy
Illustration of Gravy for a Full English
Prep
3 min
Cook
12 min
Total
15 min
Serves
4
Difficulty
Easy

Gravy on a full English divides people, but ask for it in a cafe in the Midlands or the north and it arrives without comment. It should not be a roast dinner gravy. It wants to be looser, browner, a bit sharp from the tomatoes, and made in the same pan everything else was cooked in so it tastes of breakfast rather than Sunday. Eight minutes, while the eggs are going.

Ingredients

Makes about 400ml, enough for four breakfasts

Scale

Kit

  • The breakfast frying pan
  • Whisk

Method

  1. Cook the mushrooms and tomatoes in the pan after the bacon and sausages come out, so they pick up the fat and the residue. Push them to one side or lift them out onto the plates, leaving about 2 tablespoons of fat behind.

  2. Squash one of the fried tomato halves into the fat with the back of a spoon and let it cook for a minute until it darkens. That is where the sharpness comes from.

  3. Stir in the flour and cook for 60 seconds, scraping every brown scrap off the base with the whisk.

  4. Pour in a ladle of hot stock and whisk hard. It goes thick and lumpy, then smooth. Add the rest and bring it to a simmer.

  5. Simmer for 4 to 5 minutes. It should be thinner than roast gravy, loose enough to run across a plate and reach everything, because the whole point is that it gets to the beans, the bread and the sausages.

  6. Whisk in the brown sauce and Worcestershire sauce. Brown sauce is doing a lot here, giving both the tang and the colour, and it is what makes it taste like cafe gravy rather than dinner gravy.

  7. Grind in pepper and taste. Bacon fat and stock usually mean it needs no salt at all. Pour it over the plate at the table so nothing has time to go soggy.

Tips worth knowing

  • Order matters. Bacon, then sausages, then mushrooms, then tomatoes, then bread. By the end the pan is exactly what you want for the gravy.
  • Keep it thin. Thick gravy on a fried breakfast is claggy, and it stops the yolk doing its job.
  • If you have no residue because you grilled everything, use a tablespoon of butter and add an extra teaspoon of brown sauce to make up the savour.
  • Do not pour it over the egg. Almost everyone wants the yolk left alone, so put the gravy on the far side of the plate and let it find its own way.

Change it up

  • Add a chopped fried onion to the pan for a heavier gravy that suits a plate with black pudding on it.
  • Use half stock and half strong tea for something more tannic that cuts the fat, which is an old cafe trick.
  • Make it vegetarian with a strong vegetable stock, butter and mushrooms cooked hard until browned, plus a teaspoon of Marmite.

Keeping and reheating

Best fresh. It will keep 2 days in the fridge and reheats fine in a pan with a splash of water, though it loses the fresh pan flavour that makes it worth doing in the first place.

Questions people ask

Do you put gravy on a full English?

Plenty of people do, particularly in the Midlands and the north, and cafes there will often ask. It is not universal and there are parts of the country where it would raise eyebrows, but there is nothing unusual about it.

What gravy goes with a fried breakfast?

Something thin and tangy rather than a rich roast gravy. Brown sauce or a squashed fried tomato in the base gives the acidity that works against all that fat, and beef stock gives the colour and savour.

Can I make breakfast gravy without meat fat?

Yes. Brown mushrooms hard in butter until they are properly dark, then build the gravy on that with vegetable stock and Marmite. You get the same savoury weight without the bacon.