Bangers and Mash

Fall has officially come to Dublin.  Last week was crisp and cool and this week is downright windy and cold!  So last night, I decided to try something new for dinner, yet again, and make a traditional Irish meal: Bangers and Mash!  I found a gazillion recipes on Pinterest and decided, yet again, to combine like 3 different recipes that sounded good.  Drew hates it when I do this but I'm simply combining all the best parts from all the recipes to make the best dish POSSIBLE!  And he never complains once he's got an amazing meal in front of him.  Pssshh.

Bangers and Mash is a dish you'll find in many of the pubs all over Ireland and the UK.  It basically consists of sausages, mashed potatoes, and some sort of onion gravy.  Sign me up!  According to Wikipedia, "Bangers", or sausage, "is attributed to the fact that sausages, particularly the kind made during World War II under rationing, were made with water so they were more likely to explode under high heat if not cooked carefully; modern sausages do not have this attritube."

So...let's get started!

Here's the cast of characters: potatoes (I could only find 1kg of baby potatoes and 2 big red potatoes), heavy cream, garlic, mushrooms, Worcestershire sauce, a flavored sausage of your liking, dijon mustard, onions, butter, and sherry/red wine.  Though you should definitely have red wine to drink while you're cooking.

Start by peeling all of your tiny ass potatoes in the sink with a veggie peeler and try hard not to slice your hands or fingernails in the process.  I barely made it unscathed.  Then cut them into chunks and put them in some salted boiling water for 15-20 minutes, until they're softish.

Heat up a pan and throw your sausages in there to brown and cook all the way through.  

While those pups are heating up, slice two onions very finely.

Take time to take some pics of your cute husband, who surprisingly wanted to help out tonight.

Browned sausages.  Yummm.

After those are done, set those aside on a plate and throw in all of your sliced onions!

Though absolutely no recipe I've found calls for them, we sliced up some shrooms and threw those in too!  You know I can't resist mushrooms in...well, anything.

Chops up two cloves of garlic...

And measure out a cup of chicken stock.

Throw the garlic in with the onions and the shrooms....

And then add two tablespoons of flour, to get a good base going to thicken your gravy.

Stir all that up and make sure everything is coated and cookin'.

Pour in the cup of chicken stock, followed with 1/4 cup of sherry/madeira, and a couple of shakes of Worcestershire sauce.  Stir it all around and let it thicken!

Why not throw some heavy cream in?  It'll only make it taste better, for cryin' out loud.

Ohhh yeah.  Stir that shit up and prepare to be amazed.

Meanwhile, drain those taters in a colander and get all the water out.  Return them to the pot you boiled them in.

Throw in some butter (no exact measurement), some heavy cream (no exact measurement), a spoonful of dijon mustard, Worcestershire sauce, and some salt and pepp.

Then start mashing away!

After you get all those flavors right and you've tasted the potatoes multiple times, go ahead and return those sausages to the pan with the gravy to heat up.

Time to eat!  Scoop up some mashed potatoes, two sausages each, and a bunch of the creamy yummy oniony gravy.

I threw some Herbes de Provence on there to add some green and add some more flava.

And...voila!  Bangers and Mash!

Now I've only had this once in a pub, but my homemade version was pretty darn good if I do say so myself.  However, most pictures and recipes I've seen have a thinner gravy than the one I made, and I would maybe attempt to thin mine out a bit too next time.  Some recipes also call for fried onions, which I think would be good cause it'd give the dish some crunch and a little more texture.

You can look at the 3 different recipes I combined here, here, and here.  As you can tell in my opinion, there's no right or wrong way to make this!  Or anything!  Give it a whirl and see what you like.

Cheers!