There are few meals as beloved on our island as the perfect Full Irish. Known as the cure for whatever ails you, a hearty plate to start the day is one of the greatest food traditions we know. When it’s executed properly, it’s a thing of beauty. Behold, the seven steps to making sure your fry is spot on

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The Egg

Scrambled or boiled if you must, but for a perfect fry-up, the key is in the name, the egg must be fried. A white fluffy cloud enveloping a golden yellow centre that looks solid, but once pinched oozes eggy goodness crying out to be soaked up with carbs. Delicious.

The Rashers

Succulent strips of bacon sizzling and singing in the pan, as the heady salty aroma wafts through the air, is there a happier sight to be seen in the kitchen? Left in the pan just long enough for the fat to turn crispy and golden.

The Veggies

For purists, the traditional additions are beans, tomatoes and mushrooms. The beans, to provide a little river of tomato sauce that touches off everything else on the plate, the mushrooms, gently fried and succulent, and the tomato, invariably cut in half and fried alongside its mushroom friends.

The Sausages

To prick or not to prick, that is the question? Two on the plate, side by side and golden brown with pinkish hints at either end, mere suggestions of the hearty goodness that lies within…

The Toast

The best breakfast bread is white and toasted. Unless it’s a homemade soda bread, in which case all bets are off and you should give hearty praise to the chef responsible, most often granny. Everyone knows that granny makes the best soda bread.

The Pudding

Going together like ebony and ivory, the black and white pudding make up the final third of the perfect breakfast meat trifecta. Foreigners just don’t get it – but we don’t need them to. We know what it tastes like, and that’s really all that matters.

The Cuppa

No Full Irish is complete without the mug of tea to wash it down. Lyons or Barry’s, whatever the family favourite happens to be – just make sure to make a very large pot. 

 

What makes up your perfect breakfast? Our pals at Denny are on a mission to find out, with the Denny Breafast Census. You can find our more from Denny on Facebook and Twitter, and click here to get started on your breakfast census answers.