The best British breakfast is a multiple course affair, commencing with some sort of cereal, traditionally porridge, followed by a hot dish usually comprising of egg with meat or fish and finishing with toast and marmalade. With the diverse range of delicious ingredients readily available all over the UK, the endless benefits to starting the day with a British breakfast are there to be enjoyed. It needn't be a calorific extravaganza. Recent research has proved that people who start the day with a healthy breakfast are more likely to be within their ideal weight range than those who skip it.

One of the integral components to a British breakfast is meat or fish. The array of traditional meats include bacon, sausage, grilled kidneys and mutton chops. Bacon was the nation's favourite breakfast ingredient in 2009 with approximately £18.00 a head spent on it. The same study revealed that on average £9.00 a head was spent on sausages. There are currently over 400 varieties of sausage in the UK so there is a vast amount of choice, just as long as it is British. To ensure that they are British look for the Quality Standard Bacon or Pork marks or [click here]. British pork and bacon are produced to some of the highest standards in the world. Mutton chops and kidneys can be bought from a local butcher or from online butchers such as Graig Farm or Donald Russell.

Oat cuisine is enjoying something of a resurgence and porridge is at the forefront of the grain's renaissance. The Daily Telegraph calls porridge the King of the Super foods [click here]. The health benefits of porridge run from helping children to read, to lowering blood pressure. To ensure its wholesomeness, this really is a dish best made yourself, not least because of the money you'll save. British oats can be sourced from most supermarkets or online from Oat Farms such as Oatmeal of Alford. Research from Mintel has revealed that the UK spent £1.8 billion on breakfast cereal in 2009 and it is estimated that this figure will grow to £2.2bn by 2014. Breakfast cereals can be deceptively high in salt and sugar so it is worth doing some research and reading the ingredients before buying. Sharpham Park, Whole Earth and Alara Wholefoods are just some of the British companies that sell good-quality breakfast cereal.

Smoked fish is a healthier alternative to sausages and adds an earthiness to the British breakfast plate. There is nothing more flavoursome, or Scottish, to add to the breakfast table than Arbroath Smokies. They comprise of small haddock that are gutted, then tied together in pairs and either salted or pickled in brine before being smoked over a peat fire. Arbroath Smokies are best eaten with with a squeeze of lemon and a sprinkling of black pepper, accompanied by brown bread and butter. Other British breakfast fish are kippers, available from local Fishmongers or online from MacKenzie Ltd and Scottish smoked salmon. The unusual Welsh breakfast traditions are laverbread and fried cockles. Laverbread is an edible seaweed that is gathered from the rocky shores of the southern coast of Wales. It is often served plain like spinach, as an added ingredient in porridge or mixed with oatmeal and fried into a sort of griddlecake.

Be they poached, scrambled, baked, boiled or fried, all shop-bought eggs should be individually stamped with a 'red lion' logo [click here]. There is often a misconception that welfare-friendly eggs are far more expensive. However, if you can buy them straight from a producer then there is barely a difference between free-range and battery eggs.

When buying British bread look for smaller 'craft' bakeries such as True Loaf Bakery or Long Crichel Bakery Ltd or for really pure and fresh bread make your own. Despite butter containing saturated fat it has plenty of natural goodness, especially pure British farmhouse butter, made with cream from cows grazed on grass. It is rich in vitamins A and D and a bit of butter a day could help with weight loss as calories in butter are more easily burned than those in long-chain fatty acids. Definitely Devon and Pengoon Farm both offer mailorder services for butter. Bitter oranges become available in February, which makes it the best month to make your own marmalade. The main ingredient of marmalade may not be native to the UK but it was invented in Dundee at the end of the eighteenth century. If oranges aren't the only fruit to appeal, then there is an exhaustive array of alternative British preserves available from most delicatessens, farmers markets and supermarkets. British honey also makes a formidable accompaniment to toast.

With a little bit of thought and a margin of effort breakfast can be a cost effective, healthy, filling and above all truly British meal. This month The Sauce sets out to prove it.

The Sauce

The Great British Breakfast

• What was your British breakfast menu?


• Apple and cinnamon porridge or British muesli (Dorset Cereals)
• Scrambled eggs,
• mushrooms,
• homemade potato hash browns,
• grilled bacon or smoked salmon
• Toast and jam
• Apple juice


• How readily available were the ingredients?
  All the main ingredients were British and most of them local. They were obtained them from four different places - a local farm box, which is delivered to my door each week, a local farmers market, a specialist food shop and a supermarket. I could easily have purchased all the ingredients at the supermarket and farmers market.


• Farm box; potatoes, apples and mushrooms


• Specialist shop; oats and Cawston Vale English apple juice


• Farmers market; wholemeal bread, eggs and gooseberry and raspberry jam


• Supermarket: British bacon, Scottish smoked salmon, British farmhouse butter and British cereal.


• How easy was it to make and how much time did it take?
  This was very quick and easy to make. I only started cooking once the guests had arrived. The potato hash browns took a little longer than I had anticipated so we had a gap between the porridge and egg course.


• What was the sum total cost of this meal
  £13 – this is based on everyone eating porridge instead of muesli.


• How many people did it actually feed?
  Four


• What did you do with leftovers?
  There were no leftovers.


• Is there anything you would have done differently?
  I would have cooked the potato hash browns whilst making the porridge and kept them warm in the oven and crisped them up before serving. . In the summer, tomatoes could be added when they’re in season.


• What did your guests think of the meal?
  The average score was 8.5 out of ten.  This menu for me tasted even better than it sounded. We all thoroughly enjoyed it and found having separate courses made a change from the less healthy fried brunch that we would usually eat. Although we did have bacon and hash browns, the overall feel was of a healthy meal. The apple and cinnamon porridge was tasty and fresh (due to the grated raw apple). Interestingly we all opted for porridge. The British jams were delicious. They tasted homemade and so different from shop-bought jam. Spending a little extra on buying a really good quality apple juice and local eggs, bread and jam from the farmers market made a big difference to the meal.