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Bangers & Mash with Onion Gravy
Our namesake and Britain’s most-loved pub plate: proper butcher’s sausages on cloud-soft mash, drowned in slow-caramelised onion gravy. “Bangers” for the way they burst in the pan — we cook them gently so they never do.
- Prep
- 15 min
- Cook
- 35 min
- Total
- 50 min
- Yield
- Serves 4
- Difficulty
- Easy
- Era
- WWI slang, eternal dish
Ingredients
- 8 pork sausages (Cumberland or Lincolnshire)
- Mash: 1kg Maris Piper potatoes, 75g butter, 100ml warm milk
- Onion gravy: 3 onions, thinly sliced; 40g butter; 1 tsp sugar
- 1 tbsp flour; 500ml beef stock; 1 tbsp balsamic vinegar; sprig of thyme
- Buttered peas, to serve
Method
- Start the gravy: melt the butter, add the onions and sugar, and cook gently for 20–25 minutes until deep amber. Rush this and you have onion stock, not gravy.
- Meanwhile prick nothing — place the sausages in a frying pan with a splash of oil over medium-low heat and cook 15–20 minutes, turning, until evenly bronzed.
- Boil the potatoes until very tender; drain, dry over the heat for a minute, and mash with butter and warm milk until silky.
- Stir the flour into the onions, cook 1 minute, then add the stock, vinegar and thyme; simmer 5 minutes until glossy.
- Serve a swoop of mash, three bangers standing proud, gravy over everything, peas on the side.
Oven temperatures are given in Celsius, Fahrenheit, fan and gas mark throughout. Quantities are metric, as cooked and written in the UK.