Sausage and Egg Muffin

Let's start by saying this isn't really a recipe, more of a tip or review!  I really like the breakfast menu at McDonalds, and in particular, the Sausage and Egg McMuffin.  But can I justify £2.19 for what is essentially a snack?  I've been experimenting for a while now, and have finally come up with my own version that tastes better and is much cheaper (about 65-90p).  Mainly, it's been about finding the best tasting ingredients.  By the way, I do my main shop at Tesco, but I promise I have tried products from all over the place - it's just a coincidence that the Tesco products win for me!

Sausage

It's surprisingly hard to find these.  I tried Lorne Sausage (the flat square sausage from Scotland).  I tried taking the meat from a normal sausage and squishing it into a hamburger shape, and also adapting the sausage meat in various ways.  There was also a sausage patty that Iceland sells - which I didn't rate at all, very fatty yet still somewhat tasteless.  All of these were OK, but didn't taste exactly how I would like.  The winner here is Tesco frozen Pork and Herb Sausage Patties (£2.30 for 6) which are delicious.

(A special shout out to my own Vegetable Roll here too, it is absolutely delicious in a muffin, but not the same as the Maccy-Ds :-) )

Muffin

Almost all English Muffins you can buy taste pretty much the same.  However, for this 'recipe', it is really important to (a) toast them and (b) butter them.  I have found two in particular that are fab - Warburtons (80p for 4) is the cheapest 'good' one I found.  But the very best muffin for me is Tesco Finest Cheese and Black Pepper English Muffins (£1.30 for 4) - the extra flavour is worth the extra cost!

Cheese

I know people will hate me for this, but 'real' cheese just isn't right on this!  You can bleat on about it all you like, but you need the more plasticky cheese single for this!  The very best ones are from Dairylea, but there is so little difference I usually use the cheapest ones, like Creamfields Singles at the bargain price of 50p for 10.

Egg

I've done lots of experiments with eggs for muffins!  The closest to the real thing is to buy an egg ring and use it to fry the egg in a frying pan.  A good alternative for me was to crack the egg into a ramekin and bake it in the oven.  But here's the controversial bit - I don't like the egg in the McDonald's version.  McDonalds *do* have an egg that I like, more of an omelette, but they only use it in their breakfast wraps and bagels.  So I crack my eggs into a shallow tapas dish, beat them up, and microwave them for 1-2 minutes.  Omelette-y goodness is a massive improvement!

Ketchup

Only one ketchup exists - Heinz.  Discussion over.

Ulster Fry

OK, so firstly, this picture does not do justice to the delight that is the Ulster Fry.  I mean I've done some processing on the photo, but unfortunately, I took my eye off the ball when cooking this, and there's no getting away from it, almost everything on the plate is overdone.  But this blog is meant to be about the real world, and in the real world this happens sometimes...  and it was still absolutely delicious!

Also, today's blog is more of a serving suggestion than a recipe... but I wanted to bring a few of my recipes together into one meal.  Forget about calories with this one, it's a huge portion, filling treat of a weekend breakfast.

Finally, there will be many Northern Irish folk fainting at the prospect of beans on an Ulster Fry.  No, they're not traditionally part of it.  But I like them, so I say PFFT!

Ingredients (per person)

2 slices Bacon
2 slices Vegetable Roll
1/2 Soda Bread Farl
1 Potato Cake
1 Egg
100-200g Baked Beans
Brown Sauce or Ketchup (optional)

Method

Honestly, the method is simply cook everything and bung it on a plate!  But if you'd like a bit more detail...

1.  Start cooking the bacon and vegetable roll.  You can either do this by frying in a pan with a little oil, grilling, or oven baking in a hot oven.

2. When there's about 5 minutes to go on your meat, pop your beans in a saucepan and heat on a medium heat until hot.  (Or place in a microwave dish and zap in the microwave for a couple of minutes).

3.  At the same time, heat up a little oil in a frying pan and crack an egg into it.  Add the soda bread and potato cake and cook for a minute or two on each side until they're how you like them,  (You can also do the bread and potato cake by sticking them in a toaster, but that just isn't quite as nice as they come out a bit dry - although you can butter them afterwards to help with that.)

4.  Once everything is cooked, bung them on a plate, add ketchup or brown sauce to taste and get it down your neck :-)

Soda Bread Farls

I really used to miss Soda Bread, another staple Northern Irish food.  Soda bread is available in most English supermarkets, but it's always the brown/wholemeal sort, and not the delicious bread of my childhood.  Soda farls (farl refers to the shape of the bread) were briefly available in my local supermarket, but were discontinued, so I was at a loss - until I found out how incredibly quick and easy they are to make!  And it can be made in advance in batches, as it freezes really well.

Soda bread is delicious when it's cut through the middle and grilled or toasted - buttered and topped with bacon and brown sauce, or sausage and a fried egg... or my personal favourite, corned beef and melted cheddar (I can hear the discomfort of Ulster folk as I write that, but I love it!).  It's also a vital ingredient to be fried up in an Ulster Fry.

Ingredients

300g Plain Flour
1 tsp Salt
2 tsp Bicarbonate of Soda
250ml Milk
2 tsp Lemon Juice

Method

1. Stir the lemon juice into the milk, and leave to sit for about 10 minutes.  This allows the milk to curdle slightly, forming a buttermilk.  (You may just use buttermilk instead, but my local shops don't seem to have it).

2. Mix together the flour, salt and bicarbonate of soda in a bowl.

3. Make a hole in the middle of the flour mixture and add the milk mixture.

4.  Get in with your hands and mix the ingredients to form a fairly dry dough.  If your dough is sticky, add some more flour a spoon at a time.  If it becomes too dry (and starts cracking), add a splash of milk.

5. Sprinkle some flour on your work surface and turn out the dough.  Shape it into a circle about 1cm thick.  This is thinner than you expect, but remember your dough is going to puff up a bit when cooked.  Cut your circle into quarters with a knife.

6.  Heat a frying pan to a low to medium heat.  Sprinkle some flour in to the pan (the pan needs to be totally dry), then place your farls on top.  Now LEAVE IT ALONE for around 8-10 minutes until the underside is nicely coloured.

7.  Turn the farls over and cook for another 8-10 minutes on the other side.  Remove from the heat and allow the farls to cool completely before either freezing them or cooking with them.

Northern Irish Vegetable Roll

Vegetable Roll is confusing to folk from outside Northern Ireland.  Why?  Because it's mostly meat!  More correctly, it's sausage meat and vegetables, normally served fried or grilled in rounds as part of an Ulster Fry, Northern Ireland's favourite cooked breakfast.  Imagine slices of black pudding, but made from sausage meat instead of blood.

Since moving to Manchester, I've craved vegetable roll a lot, but never been able to find it.  One of the Asda stores nearby did have an experiment where they replaced the butchery counter with a franchise from a Northern Irish butcher and for one glorious year, vegetable roll was available whenever I wanted it... but sadly it didn't last.  I've been trying to make my own for a while, but the one recipe I found for it online tasted wrong and included odd ingredients I wouldn't normally have (what on earth is mace??!!).  Eventually I started experimenting and this is the version I've liked the most.

Ingredients

900g Sausages
(2 packs - these should traditionally be beef, but I like Asda Butcher's Selection Pork & Tomato)
2 Spring Onions
2 Baby Leeks (they had none today, so I used about half a normal leek)
120g Fine Breadcrumbs (yes, I cheat on this and use packet breadcrumbs, but I'm lazy!)
Pinch of salt and black pepper

Method

1. Take the skins off the sausages and put the sausage meat in a bowl.

2. Finely chop the spring onions and leeks.  I use an electric chopper (a bit like a tiny food processor) that I picked up for about a tenner.  It makes life easier and gives you nice tiny pieces.

3. Add the chopped leeks and spring onions, along with the breadcrumbs to the bowl with the sausage meat, and add a little salt and pepper.

4. Time to get your hands dirty!  Knead the whole mixture with your hands until it all comes together.  It's done when the vegetables are fairly evenly spread and you can no longer feel the grittiness of the breadcrumbs.

5. Turn out the mixture on to a board and form into a thick sausage shape, about 6-8 cm thick.

6. Wrap the mixture tightly in cling film.  If you need to, roll it while in the cling film to get a nice round shape.  Then chill the sausage in the fridge for a few hours.

7.  Once chilled, cut the sausage into rounds around 1-2 cm thick.  If you're not using it all at once, it will freeze really well.  To cook, fry or grill the rounds for around 5 minutes on each side until cooked through.  Or do what I do, oven bake it at 180℃ for about 15-20 minutes - this results in a bit of a drier meat, but I love the crunchy crust this gives the outside.