Pleasant House

Growing up I had a friend named Matt, who had some pretty special parents. Sadly, both of his parents passed away when we were young, and sadly, I lost touch with Matt. But I’ll always remember how much fun we used to have hanging out playing Oregon Trail on his Apple computers and drinking Old Thyme ginger beer. We’d camp out in Matt’s backyard and talk about The Hobbit around a campfire. The next morning always came with a big bonus–a legendary breakfast on the grill by Matt’s dad. By the time we woke up he had already lit the grill and bacon was sizzling in a cast iron skillet.

There are a lot of reasons why I love food and perhaps, surprisingly, filling the void in my stomach is not first on the list. Eat to live, live to eat, whatever your mantra, breakfast is the most important meal of the day. An outdoor-grilled breakfast will always be uniquely special to me, and while it’s not incredibly complicated I’m happy to pass along my technique as well as the story of my special breakfast to you.

My culinary chops have come a long way since those childhood days of Sizzlean and eggs. I’m still using bacon and eggs, but the bacon tends to be of artisan quality and the eggs from pasture-raised chickens. After all, it’s no secret that Chelsea and my relationship is said to be based on “preparing absurdly complicated recipes using overpriced ingredients.” But don’t worry, this technique is not too complicated; it’s mostly a matter of convenience. The expense of such a breakfast can range from low to high depending on the type of ingredients that you procure. I will always recommend sourcing the highest-quality ingredients, because they will perform and taste the best.

Ironically, this grilled breakfast is traditionally called an English fry-up because everything is cooked in a frying pan. An English fry-up on the grill is more like half fry-up and half grill-up. You will still use a frying pan, either an oven-safe pan or a cast iron skillet, to cook the meat and the eggs. The other half of the breakfast– the veg and toast–will be cooked directly on the grill. No matter how you organize your breakfast, the key is to light the grill and cook either part of it or all of it on the grill–whether it be in a pan on the grill or directly on the grates.

Since I live in the city and have a balcony, I use a propane grill, but I usually throw a few wood chips on it to give the food a little smoke flavor.

-An ubiquitous component of the English breakfast is baked beans, which can be cooked in a pot either on the stove or on the grill. When it comes to beans, choose your own adventure. I made a simple batch out of canned cannellini beans, canned tomato, Worcestershire sauce, mustard, ketchup, honey, veal jus, and fresh thyme.

-The first step to grilling your breakfast is to get the grill and your pan really hot. Turn on the grill and let the pan heat up inside the covered grill.

-Next, drizzle a little oil in the hot pan and add your breakfast meats. Since this is an English breakfast inspired by some samples of bangers and rashers from a Chicago company called Spencer’s, I added two of their traditional bangers and two of their herbed bangers. I let the bangers cook gently in the pan with the grill covered and turned them frequently so as not to develop a thick sear on any one side.

-While the sausages were sizzling I lightly doused a bunch of hyper-seasonal ramps with a little olive oil, seasoned them with salt and pepper, and began grilling them directly on the grates. I also sliced a vine-ripened tomato in half, gave it the same oil and seasoning treatment, added a little piment d’espellete, and began to grill it. After a few minutes of cooking the ramps on the grill, I wrapped them in a little pouch of foil so that steam rendered them tantalizingly unctuous.

-When the sausages were thoroughly cooked, I set them on a plate to the side and added my bacon–in this case, back bacon, or “rashers,” to the hot pan on the grill. The bacon cooks quickly. Once it was cooked through, I crisped it up directly on the grill then set it aside with the bangers to keep warm.

-Eggs were then cooked in the same pan as was the meat; I like mine over-easy. When the eggs are ready, put them on a warm plate.

-A few pieces of toast were then rubbed around in the grease left behind in the pan and then grilled until toasted.

That’s the low-down on my grilled English breakfast. All that’s left is to pile all of the elements onto the plate, pour some tea, and watch some cricket on the telly. Of course, it’s up to you as to how you want to do it. Cook as much or as little as you want to on the grill, drink coffee, watch baseball, prepare most of the ingredients from scratch like these guys did, or just do bacon and eggs and toast. But some Sunday morning, when the air is still and crisp and everything is quiet, fire up the grill and entice whoever is in the house with the smell of bacon and wood smoke, and become legendary for your own grilled breakfast.