One of the things that I really miss about the UK
is the breakfast.
Now, I know that British food has a
ghastly, ghastly reputation,
and I have to admit, it's largely deserved, quite frankly.
However, there's nothing quite like
a full English breakfast.
Whether it be fuel for a hard day of labor,
a comforting meal to ward off a dreary day,
or a cure for a epic hangover,
the meal is a celebration of breakfast.
It is breakfast as feast.
Also known as the full monty or the fry-up,
the meal has become refined into a foundational
set of ingredients.
Eggs, bacon, sausage, mushrooms,
tomatoes, beans, toast.
In New York, British chef, April Bloomfield
is reforming the way that people feel about English food.
And in my opinion, she's serving up one of the best
versions of the breakfast anywhere on Earth.
- [April] Let's do this.
Are you ready?
- This is like salvation descending upon the table.
- You can make this into an elegant dish,
you know, precise,
just the most perfect way to set up your day.
- [Nick] You know, they say it's the most important meal
of the day, like-- - [April] Exactly.
- [Nick] This might be the most important meal of your life.
Another great British tradition is a pot of tea.
- [April] Nice pot of tea.
- All right, well chin-chin.
- Yeah, chin-chin, babe.
(glasses clinking) Happy New Year.
Look at you and your little pinky finger.
- Well, I mean, it's, you know.
(April laughs)
We're on video here.
We gotta be sophisticated.
- Oh darling, this is gonna be great.
- Oh good, OK.
So, you know, I think the bean, again,
is one of those things that like everyone outside of Britain
thinks must be on the full English breakfast,
but there's plenty of people that don't like beans.
- Exactly.
You know, I have to say,
I'm not a huge fan of Heinz baked beans
'cause you know, beans can be quite flat.
But if it's done really well,
it's actually, you know,
it's a good thing to have at the beginning of the day,
set you up.
If you like vinegary beans (claps),
Bob's your uncle, Fanny's your aunt.
- (laughs) Right, exactly.
- It's like perfect, you know.
- All right, well let's get in there and try these things.
- Great yes.
So, there's homemade sausage.
So homemade for me is really important.
It's pork shoulder, a little bit of belly,
a little bit of breadcrumb,
because it keeps all the fat in there, you know.
The bread kind of absorbs all that flavor.
- So tell me about the black pudding.
You're making that with pig's blood, I mean.
- Totally, pig's blood,
a little bit of salted back fat,
onions, a little bit of sage,
a little bit of marjoram,
and some salt and pepper.
It's really simple,
just slowly cooked.
My granddad and I used to eat
cold black pudding from the fridge,
not fried or anything, you know,
'cause it's already cooked, it's poached.
- [Nick] It's already cooked, exactly.
- And it's so good, cold black pudding.
You know, the texture.
You get this little snap
'cause when your teeth go through
the little fat, it just, you know,
it's really good.
- And so much of this meal
is sort of evocative,
if you've grown up in England,
of periods in your life, right.
You remember the first time you were hungover
when you were probably,
well you were probably 21, but I was about 13.
- Me too, I was 13.
I wasn't 21.
That's a right of passage, being drunk and hungover at 13.
- Right, and like this is the ultimate
cure for a hangover.
It really, it just hits everything that you would want,
right, grease, fat, salt.
- You know, I don't like overly crispy bacon.
- A lot of times in the UK they'll use back bacon,
which is not the same as this.
This is called streaky bacon,
which in the states, this is made from belly.
But in the UK, it's really more like
a Canadian bacon.
- Yeah, the Canadian bacon
is usually the eye of the loin.
My grandfather makes a great English breakfast.
Actually, he used to own a cafe in Birmingham, and--
- So this is a family tradition right here.
- This is like a, yeah exactly.
You know, my granddad,
I remember my granddad on weekends making fry-ups.
You know, and he had the mushrooms working,
and the tomatoes.
You know, fried egg, bacon.
Just, I don't know, there's something
very familiar and comforting about eating
a full English breakfast.
- This is like on a different level.
Like this is to me is like
the reason I moved to the states, right,
because everything is better in the states.
And sure enough I found like my
platonic ideal of a breakfast
is now not that far from my house.
To watch more episodes of The Meat Show
click here now.
I am here to try to bring the meat pie back to the states.
Ann just cooks them in the back,
she's gonna bring them out,
we're gonna dissect them,
we're gonna talk about them
and most importantly, we're gonna eat them.
(lively music)