An authority on the full English breakfast is calling for hash browns to be removed from a fry-up. The English Breakfast Society believes the potato-based food has no place in a proper fry-up - and is calling for bubble and squeak to be included instead.
The campaign group, which is dedicated to the history, heritage, and culture of the English breakfast according to The Times, says hash browns have become become popularised by fast-food chain McDonald's. Their call for it to be removed from fry-ups comes despite a 2017 poll from YouGov finding that 60 per cent of the British public believes that hash browns are the most important part of the staple meal.
“Somebody had to put their foot down,” Guise Bule de Missenden, founder of the English Breakfast Society, said regarding his campaign. “Otherwise we’ll find kebab meat in our English breakfast before long.
“The hash brown — the reconstituted, tater-based fast-food – was popularised by McDonald’s but somehow we now find it in our English breakfast.
“We’re all about bringing back the bubble. That’s the reason we’re saying no to hash browns. Hashtag, bring back the bubble.”
The ingredients included in a fry-up can cause controversy, and not everybody sees eye to eye on the matter. Food journalist Felicity Cloake believes the likes of black pudding, tomatoes and mushrooms all belong in a fry-up, but not hash browns - although she admits it has become a sight to which she may have to become accustomed.
“For me, the essential items are bacon, egg, sausage, black pudding, grilled or tinned tomatoes, fried mushrooms and then some sort of carb to soak up all the delicious grease – so bubble and squeak or a fried slice,” she said. “Hash browns don’t work because, like chips, they’re already so crisp and oily they can’t absorb any more fat; you really need something softer and starchier to do the job properly.
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“The English breakfast already absorbed baked beans into its fold... so I suppose us old-fashioned types must reluctantly accept this new phase of its evolution.”
As for the key ingredients in a fry-up, the same YouGov poll in 2017 found that bacon is the most important part of a full English breakfast. The research revealed that it is single most important part of a full English breakfast, with 89 per cent of English people saying it would feature on their ideal plate, while only 60 per cent thought that hash browns were crucial.
The English Breakfast Society includes back bacon, eggs, British sausage, baked beans, fried tomato, fried mushrooms, black pudding, and fried and toasted bread among its common breakfast ingredients. Society member Jon Gale agrees.
“The problem is these days, if you go out for a meal, a breakfast in a cafe or a hotel, you tend to get these nasty little fatty triangles, deep-fried frozen potato," he said.
“People have eaten fried potato and rosties for years, but these horrible little insidious triangles of potato are pretty revolting. Why not do something half decent and traditional and do a decent bit of bubble and squeak?
“Waste not, want not was the motto back in the day,” he said. “With all these rising prices now, people don’t seem to realise today how you can use a little bit of leftover potato and you’ve saved yourself the cost of a meal.”
The society also had a pop at McDonald's for the popularity of hash browns. In a tweet, they wrote: "PSA: The frozen hash brown was popularised by McDonalds.
"Serving them to customers in your English breakfast as a lazy replacement for bubble & squeak signals your lack of respect for the tradition, your customers, and your country. Do better."
An English breakfast typically consists of sausages, bacon, eggs, beans, tomatoes and fried mushrooms. Just 35 per cent of respondents to the YouGov poll said that black pudding was the most important ingredient, while 71 per cent said it was baked beans, which are thought to have been added to the dish following a 1960s ad campaign.
Although the full English is viewed as a British tradition, Ms Cloake says it was probably dreamt up in the 1930s. She said: “Though all the ingredients have been eaten for breakfast for centuries, the idea of them all together on one plate is much newer.
"The earliest mention of it I found was 1933, but it didn’t really become an institution until well after the Second World War, during the heyday of the Great British caff.
“‘Hashed brown potatoes’ were already known here in the Victorian period but they seem to have first popped up as a specific breakfast item in the 1980s, which I suspect probably has something to do with McDonald’s serving them for breakfast from 1982 onwards."
