The first time I had a real full English breakfast was in Brighton Beach many years ago while Betsy and I were visiting a few friends.
I’m positive this has been noted before, but the full English breakfast which includes various meats, mushrooms, tomatoes, beans, and eggs was undoubtedly first created after a long night at the pubs.
In fact, I think if you order more than six beers at a pub, you should get a free English breakfast in the morning. That’s just good business.
If you want to make a full English breakfast at home, it’s kind of a lot of work. You have to cook at least two kinds of breakfast meat, plus grill a bunch of mushrooms and tomatoes and pile it all together.
I came up with the idea for this English Breakfast Frittata because it has all the same lovely flavors, but is actually easier to make. It’s essentially a one-pot breakfast and can be equally good after a few pints.
English Breakfast Frittata
Equipment
Ingredients
- 8 large eggs
- ¼ cup Greek yogurt
- 4 strips bacon
- ⅓ pound Italian spicy sausage
- 1 cup Cremini mushrooms, sliced
- 8 cherry tomatoes, halved
- 1 cup black beans, drained
- Pinch of red pepper flakes
- Salt and pepper
- Fresh chives, garnish
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Chop bacon into 1/2-inch chunks and remove sausage from casing if there is one.
- Add bacon and sausage to a cold cast iron skillet over medium heat. Cook slowly to brown and render out fat. Once browned, about 10-12 minutes, remove from pan.
- Meanwhile, whisk together eggs and greek yogurt. Slice mushrooms and tomatoes, and drain and rinse black beans.
- Leave the rendered fat in the cast iron skillet. Add mushrooms and tomatoes and cook until mushrooms are wilted, about 3-4 minutes. Then add black beans and cook for another minute or so.
- Add sausage and bacon back to the skillet and try to evenly distribute the fillings over the skillet. Season with salt and pepper.
- Pour egg mixture evenly over the ingredients. Return to stove and let heat for 30 seconds. Then transfer to a preheated 350 degree oven and bake until egg is cooked through, roughly 15 minutes.
- Garnish frittata with fresh chives, slice, and serve while warm.
Nutrition
Did you make this recipe?
English Breakfast Frittata
Ingredients
A proper English breakfast usually starts with a big pile of meats. Bacon and various sausages are almost always included. For the frittata version, we want these things, but we don’t need as much.
A small amount of each will give us the flavor we need in our English Breakfast Frittata.
You’ll also want some tomatoes and mushrooms. I went with cherry tomatoes rather than using whole tomatoes because they would bake into the frittata easier.
Starting the Frittata
While you don’t need a cast iron skillet for this dish, it’s makes it dumb simple to make. If you have a 12-inch variety, you can cook your fillings in the pan and then add the eggs and bake the whole thing in the same pan.
Start by adding your sausage and bacon to the skillet over medium heat. Add the meats to a cold skillet so they heat slowly and some of the fat renders out. Let them cook for 10-12 minutes until they are nicely browned.
Then you can remove the sausage and bacon and add the sliced mushrooms and tomatoes. When the mushrooms start to wither and lose their liquid, you can also add the black beans.
These veggies will just need to cook for 4-5 minutes. Don’t over-cook the beans or they will get mushy.
Egg Time
While you could just scramble some eggs and toss them in the pan, I wanted to bulk up the eggs a bit to make them richer so I whisked in some Greek yogurt. You will need to whisk this so the yogurt gets fully incorporated!
Then add the bacon and sausage back to the skillet and pour in the eggs! Now would be a good time to season with a pinch of salt and pepper as well.
Once the eggs are added, return it to the stove for about 30 seconds to start cooking the eggs and then it’s ready for the oven.
Baking the Frittata
If you have a cast iron skillet, just transfer the whole thing to the oven and let it bake for about 15 minutes until the eggs are set in the center.
If you don’t have a cast iron skillet, you’ll have to transfer your fillings to an 8×8 baking dish and then pour the eggs in and bake that. It’ll need a few extra minutes to bake, but should work fine.
This was my finished English Breakfast Frittata!
Fresh chives are a great garnish for a little onion flavor and also color.
Slice it and serve it!
While I normally would add cheese to a frittata, I didn’t miss it with all the other stuff that’s going on in this English Breakfast Frittata.
Hot sauce is never a bad idea though.
If you are ever over-served by some Brits, make them this the next day!
Don’t Have a Cast Iron Skillet?
Kim
Nick – I live in the land of English breakfasts and you are so right about their magic hangover cure ability, especially the All-Day Breakfast which allows you to sleep off the worst effects and sit down to a fry-up at about 4pm – perfect. Chips are always a welcome side as is fried bread. Grease could be a food group in its own right at a working man’s or seaside caffe. So glad you used the (Kind of) qualifier…. it’s just about impossible to get spicy Italian sausage outside little Italy in London and we can never find black beans that don’t require soaking overnight etc. etc. but I did love the play on black beans, black pudding (another vital item on a full Monty.) At any rate with a few substitutions I will try this at home though I might not announce it as an English breakfast frittata! Thanks for a great blog! Cheerio!