Every Irish person is well familiar with the good old “Breakfast Roll”. This essentially squishes together most of the components of a Full Irish breakfast with some ketchup in a bread roll. Hardly rocket science you may think… But think again, this is the tastiest, most comforting and not remotely healthy breakfast sandwich you will ever have. This is the typical cure for a hangover, and many a Friday morning in college was started with such a breakfast.

My boyfriend often accuses me of being a health nut, and never seems quite as excited as I am about porridge, fruit salad etc for breakfast, so when we go away for the weekend we generally try and compromise, with one fresh and healthy breakfast, and one more indulgent “hey-its-the-weekend” breakfast. This was a good call a few weeks back after a particularly good night out in Schull, West Cork. With our bellies full we went for a walk along the water and soaked up the sun,  the refreshing breeze and visited the local Altar Wedge Tomb (as you do).

This is worth trying after a rough night out. Don’t scrimp on the ingredients though, cheap sausages and black pudding won’t cut the mustard. And ditch the awful sugary ketchup for some nice relish. Some fried cherry tomatoes and spring onions give it a nice little fresh sweetness too. We were stuck with tiny mini-ciabatta rolls which were far too narrow, try and find something wider so your roll doesn’t resemble the leaning tower of Pisa like mine did!

Ingredients (serves 2):

2 good bread rolls

3-4 sausages

6 slices Black pudding (Clonakilty Blackpudding is hands down the best)

2 eggs

1 bunch spring onions chopped

1 handful cherry plum tomatoes sliced

Tomato relish (I used Ballymaloe tomato relish but you can try my homemade tomato relish or my sweet apple relish if you want)

1. Put a little oil in a frying pan on a medium-high heat and fry the sausages until golden and cooked through. Add the slice pudding to the pan and fry for a few minutes on each side. (Black pudding is actually boiled before it’s packaged, so you don’t have to worry about it being undercooked, as it’s already cooked through. You just want to heat it through properly and let it crispy on each side).
2. Fry the spring onions and tomatoes until soft, the tomatoes should be nice and sweet and gooey. Finally fry the egg for a few minutes until cooked to your liking, I like a gooey yolk.
3. Slice the rolls, and lightly toast under the grill on each side so they’re warmed through. Then slather generously with relish and start layering up your ingredients. I ended up slicing my cooked sausages length ways so they wouldn’t roll out. Enjoy!