Growing up in the UK you can’t avoid eating this very traditional meal made from sausages, mashed potato and onion gravy. In the popular imagination it was so important that Desperate Dan, a comic book character from my childhood, always finished each story with a large plate of Bangers & Mash.
By: Roy Hanney
Often eaten with peas or even baked beans this meal has to be a staple for food for the English. Even if your mother never cooked it certainly you would find this food on any cafe or pub menu. Where ever you eat it though, you need mustard preferably hot English mustard though the milder German or French will do at a push.
The term “bangers” apparently comes from before World War II and may even go as far back as 1919. It seems that back then there was a food shortage due to the war and sausages were made with water. Consequently, if you cooked them they were likely to explode like a firework. Thankfully modern sausages don’t do this.
In 1961 film stars Peter Sellers and Sophie Loren recorded a song praising this so British food singing “No wonder you’re so bony Joe, and skinny as a rake. Well then, give us a bash at the bangers and mash me mother used to make”. So how can you make this dish? Well its very simple and all you have to do is follow the instructions below. It’s also very cheap and takes around 20 minutes!
What you need:
- Sausages
- Potatoes
- Peas
- Onions
- Milk
- Butter
- Black Pepper
- Instant Gravy
What you need to do:
- Peel and boil the potatoes, when they are soft mash them to a smooth paste adding milk, butter and black pepper.
- Make up the instant gravy by adding boiling water to a few spoonfuls of gravy mix.
- Fry the onions in a pan and add the sausages. Cook till brown and the onions are golden. Then pour over the gravy and let it simmer.
- Boil a pan of water and add the peas. When they are cooked drain them and they are ready to serve.
Serve on a plate nice and hot and indulge in what can only be described as ‘comfort food’ and imagine you are back in Blighty (a nickname for England) eating in a local cafe, at home eating your mothers cooking or even better – at school eating in the canteen. The better the sausages the better the taste of the meal so try and get some good ones.
A glimpse of English food. Sometimes food is not about varieties or flavour. Food can be comfort especially when you are traveling out of your hometown and often feel homesick. The best food is with the flavour of how your momma made it at home for you. Food is not just taste and filling. It’s also a container of nostalgia.
If you want to get REALLY fancy you can add some garlic and olive oil to the mash and a sprig of fresh mint to the peas, but obviously that’s getting dangerously Continental for the purists.
Very nice. Of course, as a vegan, I do not eat bangers – although there are alternatives made with beans. The traditional sausage is minced meat stuffed into a (washed) intestine, although many modern bangers use synthetic versions. Yummy.
An interesting take on a classic, i prefer mine with Veggy sausages.
Also what do you make of modern gravy vs the older stuff?
No doubt about it making the gravy from scratch beats the stuff in a can everytime though as you are a veggie you won’t appreciate it being made from juices of succulant roasting meat!
Now this is one of my most treasured meals and is particularly good on a cold winters night to make you feel warm. I like it with the onion gravy and a pint of real ale (English style – ask Mr Hanney) or better still some sc_rumpy (your site will not let me spell the word!). For pudding you should have Spotted DIck and custard.
Bangers & Mash? As Desperate Dan was a real man, his favourite meal was Cow Pie, complete with horns protruding from the pastry!
Yes that is true… though I seem to remember him always eating a plate piled high with mash and hundreds of sausages poking out of this tower of mash. I can not find any evidence of this on the interweb though so perhaps I imagined it.
This is definitely British comort food. You are right about the hot British mustard. Colman’s of Norwich is a popular brand. Although I like mine with HP sauce.
mmmm I prefer them with added onion gravy made with marmite – u either like it or you don’t but very British too!
I find this blog very funny. Is the subject about food ?
Linda McCartney vegetarian sausages , peas, buttery mash and gravy…
…all the major food groups covered in one heart warming dish!
Sausages? In China? Beef? Turkey? Does it matter? Sounds like a meal I will wait to eat when I visit England….
Sausages are automatically created cylndrical by the production process itself!
But are they…. ?