Proper Bangers & Mash with Caramelised Onion & Red Wine Gravy

Name: Proper Bangers & Mash with Caramelised Onion & Red Wine Gravy
Prep time: 15 min
Cook time: 40 min
Total time: 55 min
Yield: 2 servings
Ingredients: 6 Pork sausages; 1 tbsp Neutral oil; 15 g Unsalted butter; 2 sprig Thyme; 700 g Maris Piper potatoes; 125–150 g Unsalted butter; 50–75 ml Whole milk; Salt; White pepper; Black pepper; 2 Onions; 25 g Unsalted butter; 1 tbsp Olive oil; 1 tsp Soft brown sugar; 1 tbsp Plain flour; 200 ml Red wine; 400 ml Beef stock; 1 tsp Worcestershire sauce; 1 tsp Dijon mustard; 2 sprig Thyme; 15 g Cold unsalted butter; Salt; Black pepper

Bangers and mash is one of those dishes that instantly takes me back to being a kid. It is simple, comforting and completely unapologetic, but because there are so few components, there really is nowhere for bad ingredients to hide. For me, the most important part of this whole dish is the sausage. Get yourself down to a proper butcher and buy the thickest, best-quality pork sausages you can find. You want something with loads of flavour, a really good meat content and enough fat running through it to keep everything juicy. Thin, average sausages are just not going to give you the same result here. Then it is about doing the other two components properly. The mash should be incredibly buttery, smooth and rich, and the gravy needs to be DARK, thick and glossy, with onions that have been given enough time to properly caramelise. I do not want some watery gravy disappearing underneath the mash. I want something that clings to the sausages, coats the onions and pools around the potatoes.

Prep

15m

Cook

40m

Total

55m

Proper Bangers & Mash with Caramelised Onion & Red Wine Gravy

Bangers and mash is one of those dishes that instantly takes me back to being a kid. It is simple, comforting and completely unapologetic, but because there are so few components, there really is nowhere for bad ingredients to hide. For me, the most important part of this whole dish is the sausage. Get yourself down to a proper butcher and buy the thickest, best-quality pork sausages you can find. You want something with loads of flavour, a really good meat content and enough fat running through it to keep everything juicy. Thin, average sausages are just not going to give you the same result here. Then it is about doing the other two components properly. The mash should be incredibly buttery, smooth and rich, and the gravy needs to be DARK, thick and glossy, with onions that have been given enough time to properly caramelise. I do not want some watery gravy disappearing underneath the mash. I want something that clings to the sausages, coats the onions and pools around the potatoes.

Prep

15m

Cook

40m

Total

55m

Ingredients

Method

Nutrition

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Step 1

Start with the onions because they are going to take longer than you think. Add the butter and olive oil to a large frying pan over a medium-low heat, then add the sliced onions with a small pinch of salt. Cook gently for around 20–25 minutes, stirring every so often, until they are deeply golden, soft and almost sticky. Do not try and rush this by whacking the heat up. We are not simply softening onions here; we want them properly caramelised because this is where so much of the gravy flavour is going to come from.

For

For the sausages

Pork sausages, thick, good-quality, from the butcher

tbsp

Neutral oil

Per Serving

Calories

1818kcal

Fat

140g

Saturates

69g