Celebrating Heritage British Food & Cooking
Bubble and squeak is a great way to use up all those Sunday roast or Christmas Day leftovers.
From turkey to sprouts, prawns to mince pies, here are some festive recipes to try this Christmas. Eat, drink, and be merry!
Don’t forget Boxing Day and all those lovely leftovers. Try making a tray bake or even a macaroni cheese!
Monday night’s dinner would not be complete without all those leftover roasties from Sunday chopped up and mixed with mashed potato and green vegetables all fried together. Cabbage and Brussels sprouts are particularly good done this way.
You could of course make some pretty impressive sandwiches instead.
The dish’s name supposedly derives from the noises made when the ingredients are fried.
In Cockney rhyming slang, bubble and squeak means ‘a Greek’, usually shortened to just bubble.
The Irish and Scottish have similar dishes known as colcannon or rumbledethumps respectively.
As a bonus, you are also reducing your food waste!
Bubble and Squeak
Ingredients
- 1 tbsp Duck fat goose fat or butter
- 4 rashers Streaky bacon chopped
- 1 onion finely sliced
- 1 Garlic chopped
- 15-20 Cooked Brussels sprouts sliced, or leftover boiled cabbage, shredded
- 400 g Cold leftover mashed potato or cold crushed boiled potatoes
Conversions
Instructions
- Melt the duck fat, goose fat or butter in a non-stick pan, allow it to get nice and hot, then add the chopped streaky bacon rashers. As it begins to brown, add the finely sliced onion and the chopped garlic clove.
- Next, add the sliced cooked Brussels sprouts or shredded boiled cabbage and let it colour slightly. All this will take 5-6 mins.
- Add the cold mashed potato. Work everything together in the pan and push it down so that the mixture covers the base of the pan.
- Allow the mixture to catch slightly on the base of the pan before turning it over and doing the same again. It’s the bits of potato that catch in the pan that define the term ‘bubble and squeak’, so be brave and let the mixture colour.
- Cut into wedges and serve.
You may also like one of my other favourite recipes …
Grandads Cookbook may reference or include sections of text and images reproduced courtesy of:
- BBC Good Food
- britannica.com
- nuush.co.uk