My Boxing Day Breakfast, Fried Crisp With a Guadeloupe Lift

It is the morning of the twenty-sixth and the house is still asleep. I am standing at the open fridge, looking at what Christmas left behind. Roast potatoes, cold now and a little tired. Half a dish of sprouts. Some carrots, a few parsnips. On a morning like this the British have a breakfast I have come to love, and it is called bubble and squeak.

I did not grow up with it. Christmas in Guadeloupe means the glazed ham, the boudin and the pois d’Angole, as I wrote in Christmas in the Caribbean. But I understood bubble and squeak straight away. Where I come from, a cook who throws away good food is not much of a cook.

The name comes from the noise it makes in the pan, as cold potato and greens spit and hiss in the hot fat. When the pan goes quieter, the crust is forming.

The dish is older than it looks. The earliest recipe anybody has found, in Maria Rundell’s cookery book of 1806, has no potato in it at all: cabbage and slices of rare roast beef, fried together. Potatoes turn up in recipes later in the nineteenth century, and by the second half of the twentieth, perhaps helped along by wartime rationing, potato and cabbage had become the dish British families know.

My version keeps those British bones and gives them a Guadeloupe lift. Spring onion and fresh thyme go in, because cive and thyme start nearly every pot back home. A spoon of my Caribbean Sauce Creole is stirred through the mash. Any plantain or sweet potato left from the Christmas table goes in too. Then it is fried hard until the bottom is brown and crackling, and it comes to the table with a fried egg on top.

Let me show you how I make it.

Recipe at a glance

• Cuisine: Caribbean fusion (a British leftovers classic with a Guadeloupe lift)
• Prep: 15 minutes • Cook: 25 minutes • Total: 40 minutes
• Serves: 4 (one big pan, or 8 cakes)
• Featured sauce: Caribbean Sauce Creole
• Heat level: 2/10, a soft green-chilli warmth through the potato, with more fire at the table for anyone who wants it
• Diet: vegetarian if you leave out the ham and turkey and your vegetables were not roasted in goose or beef fat. Contains milk (butter) and egg, plus wheat if you dust the cakes with plain flour. For allergens in the Sauce Creole, check the label on the jar

What you’ll need

Bubble and squeak is built on what you have, so treat the weights as a guide. The rule I keep is roughly three parts potato to two parts everything else. Potato is the glue. Too little and the cake falls apart; too much and it eats like plain fried mash.

Leftover mash holds together best. Roast potatoes give the most crunch but need crushing first. Boiled potatoes sit happily in the middle. Everything must be cold, straight from the fridge, because cold potato holds its shape and crisps where warm potato goes soft.

Think about where your leftovers have been. If the potatoes were roasted in goose fat or the sprouts were tossed with bacon, they bring that into the pan, which matters if you are cooking for a vegetarian. The butter brings milk and the eggs bring egg. For the Caribbean Sauce Creole, check the label on the jar for allergens.

For the bubble and squeak

• 600g cold cooked potatoes (mash, roast or boiled, or a mix)
• 400g cold cooked vegetables, such as Brussels sprouts, cabbage, kale, carrots, parsnips or peas
• 100g cold cooked ripe plantain or roast sweet potato (optional)
• 3 tbsp rapeseed or sunflower oil, plus a little more for the eggs
• 15g butter
• 1 onion, finely chopped
• 4 spring onions, whites and greens sliced and kept separate
• 1 tsp fresh thyme leaves (or ½ tsp dried)
• 2 tbsp Caribbean Sauce Creole
• Salt and freshly ground black pepper

For the cakes version only

• 2 tbsp plain flour, for dusting (contains wheat; cornflour works too)

To serve

• 4 eggs
• A few slices of leftover ham or turkey (optional)

You will also need a large, heavy frying pan, about 28cm across, cast iron or good non-stick. A thin pan burns in the middle and stays pale at the edges.

How I make it

1. Crush the potatoes. Tip the cold potatoes into a large bowl. If they are mash, just break them up with a fork. If they are roast or boiled, crush them with a masher into rough pieces, none bigger than a grape. Leave it lumpy. A smooth purée fries into a heavy, pasty cake; lumps and edges make the crust.

2. Chop the vegetables small. Slice the sprouts thinly, shred any cabbage or kale, and cut the carrots, parsnips and any plantain or sweet potato into pieces about 1cm across. Small pieces stick to the potato. Big chunks fall out.

3. Soften the onion. Warm 1 tbsp of the oil in your frying pan over a medium heat. Add the onion with a pinch of salt and cook for 5 to 6 minutes, stirring now and then, until it is soft and golden at the edges. Add the spring onion whites and the thyme for the last minute, until the thyme smells warm and green.

4. Mix it all together. Scrape the onion into the bowl with the potatoes. Add the chopped vegetables, most of the spring onion greens (keep a few back for the top), the Caribbean Sauce Creole and a good grind of black pepper. Mix with a spoon or clean hands until the sauce runs all the way through and a squeezed handful holds together. Taste before you add salt: the leftovers were seasoned yesterday.

5. Heat the pan properly. Wipe out the frying pan, add the remaining 2 tbsp of oil and the butter, and set it over a medium-high heat. Wait until the butter has stopped foaming and the fat is shimmering. Cold mixture in a lukewarm pan only soaks up oil.

6. Press it into the pan. Tip in the mixture and press it down firmly with a spatula into one flat, even cake about 3cm thick, right out to the edges. It will start to spit and hiss straight away. That is the bubble and the squeak.

7. Leave it alone. Turn the heat down to medium and cook for 8 minutes without stirring and without poking. Then lift one edge and look underneath. You want deep golden brown and crisp, not just coloured. If it is still pale, give it another 2 minutes.

8. Turn it in quarters. Do not try to flip the whole thing in one go. Cut it into four with the edge of the spatula, then turn each quarter over, one at a time. Press each piece down again and cook for another 8 minutes, until the second side is as brown as the first.

9. Fry the eggs and check the middle. While the second side cooks, fry the eggs in a little oil in another pan, the way your family likes them. Then break open the thickest piece of bubble and squeak and look inside. It must be steaming hot all the way through, not just warm. If it is not, turn the heat down low, cover the pan for 2 to 3 minutes and check again.

10. Serve it straight away. Slide the pieces onto warm plates, crust side up, and put an egg on each one. Scatter over the last of the spring onion greens and lay the ham or turkey alongside. Put the Caribbean Hot Sauce on the table for anyone who wants their breakfast with some fire.

Bubble and squeak cakes

The big pan is the Boxing Day way in my house, one pan in the middle of the table. Cakes are neater on a plate, and they are the version to make ahead and freeze.

Make the mixture as far as step 4. Then wet your hands and shape it into 8 cakes, each about the size of your palm and 2cm thick. If the mixture is too loose to hold, which happens with roast potatoes, work in a tablespoon of the flour. Dust each cake lightly in flour. If you have time, rest them in the fridge for 20 minutes so they firm up.

Heat 2 tbsp of the oil and the butter in the pan over a medium heat. Fry the cakes in batches, three or four at a time so they are not crowded, for 4 to 5 minutes on each side, until deep golden and crisp. Turn them once with a fish slice. Keep each batch warm in a low oven, 120°C (100°C fan), while you fry the rest, adding a splash more oil if the pan looks dry. Break one open and check the middle is steaming hot before you serve. Allow about 15 minutes longer than the big pan, plus any resting time.

Bubble and squeak with leftover vegetables: what works

Greens bring the squeak. Sprouts are the Christmas classic, sliced thin. Savoy cabbage, kale and leeks all work, and a spoon of braised red cabbage leaves dark, sweet streaks through the cake.

Roots bring sweetness. Carrots, parsnips and swede, chopped small. If you made my honey roast parsnips, the sticky ends are wonderful in here, and they bring a little scotch bonnet warmth from the glaze.

The Guadeloupe handful. Ripe plantain, already fried or roasted, leaves small sweet pockets that caramelise against the pan. Roast sweet potato, the patate douce we cook at home, does the same thing more softly. Only use them cooked. If plantain is new to you, start with what plantain actually is. My fried plantain is the green kind, fried twice until it shatters; for this pan you want it ripe and sweet instead.

Go easy on wet things. Cauliflower cheese, creamed leeks or crumbled stuffing can go in, but only a little. Too much and it steams instead of frying. Remember what they carry, too: cheese is milk, most stuffing has bread in it (wheat), and sausagemeat stuffing is not vegetarian. Keep the gravy for the plate.

Leftovers and food safety: the rules I keep

Bubble and squeak is made entirely from leftovers, so I follow the UK Food Standards Agency advice closely.

Cool it, cover it, chill it. When Christmas lunch is over, let the leftover vegetables cool, cover them and get them into the fridge within one to two hours. A dish of sprouts sitting by the warm oven all afternoon is not breakfast material. The fridge itself should be running between 0°C and 5°C.

Two days, counted from Christmas Day. The FSA says to eat leftovers within 48 hours, or freeze them. I count from when the vegetables came out of the oven, not from when I open the fridge, which makes the twenty-seventh the last morning for this pan.

Steaming hot in the middle. A crisp outside tells you nothing about the inside. Step 9 has you break open the thickest piece before anybody sits down.

One reheat, and the frying is it. The FSA says to reheat leftovers only once. Frying the cold vegetables uses up that one reheat, so once the bubble and squeak is cooked, eat it. Do not put it back in the fridge to warm up again tomorrow. The same goes for any turkey or pigs in blankets you warm through alongside.

Freeze before frying, not after. If you have more than you can eat inside the two days, shape the extra into cakes and freeze them as soon as you can. Defrost them in the fridge, cook them within 24 hours of being fully defrosted, and fry them once until steaming hot.

The role of Caribbean Sauce Creole in this dish

Cold potato is a sponge. It takes whatever you give it and gives very little back. Classic bubble and squeak leans on salt, pepper and the fat in the pan. I want a little more going on at nine o’clock on Boxing Day morning.

Onion makes up 68% of my Caribbean Sauce Creole, with green chilli, vinegar and white pepper doing the rest. Stirred through the mash, it carries seasoning into every corner of the cake instead of leaving it on top. Where the mixture meets the hot pan, that onion browns with the potato, and the crust comes out darker and sweeter.

The vinegar does a quiet job too. After a day of rich food, butter and fried potato can sit heavy, and a little sharpness lifts the plate. The green chilli stays in the background as a soft glow, never a burn, so the grandparents and the children can eat from the same pan.

Keep to 2 tablespoons for this much mixture. The sauce is wet, and a wetter mix takes longer to crisp. If you love the flavour, spoon a little more onto your plate at the end.

Tips from my kitchen

Cold mixture, hot pan. That is the whole secret of crispy bubble and squeak. The outside sets before the inside has time to go soft.

Do not touch it. Every time you stir or poke, you break the crust that is trying to form. Press it down and leave it for the full 8 minutes.

Crust all the way through. Some people like brown bits running through the middle too. Once the first side is brown, break it up, fold the crust through, press it flat again and cook for another 6 to 8 minutes before you turn it.

Cooking for two. Halve everything and use a 20 to 24cm pan, so the cake stays about 3cm thick.

What to serve it with

A fried egg is not optional in my kitchen. The yolk runs into the crust, and that is breakfast.

If there is ham left, a few cold slices of my passion fruit gammon make it a proper Boxing Day plate. Any pigs in blankets that survived can be sliced and fried alongside until steaming hot all the way through. And if you have more turkey than breakfast can use, save it for tonight: my leftover turkey curry is a Guadeloupe colombo built for exactly that.

A spoon of my cranberry sauce on the side works well too. Its sharpness and its passion fruit sit nicely against the fried potato.

Put a jar of my Caribbean Hot Sauce on the table as well. The pan stays mild on purpose, so the whole family can eat from it, and the fire lives in the jar. Anyone who wants it can spoon a little over their egg. Scotch bonnet and a runny yolk were made for each other.

FAQ

Can you freeze bubble and squeak?

Yes, but freeze it before you fry it. Shape the cold mixture into cakes, freeze them on a lined tray until solid, then pack them into a labelled bag, as soon as you can and well inside the two days. Defrost them in the fridge, cook within 24 hours of being fully defrosted, and fry until steaming hot. Do not freeze bubble and squeak you have already fried, because that frying was the vegetables’ one reheat.

How do you get bubble and squeak crispy?

Cold mixture, hot fat, a heavy pan and patience. Get the oil and butter properly hot, press the mixture down hard, then leave it alone for 8 minutes a side. Keep the mix fairly dry: crush the potato rather than puréeing it, and keep the sauce to 2 tablespoons.

What vegetables can you put in bubble and squeak?

Almost any cooked vegetable from the roast: sprouts, cabbage, kale, leeks, carrots, parsnips, swede and peas. I add ripe plantain or sweet potato when there is some. Keep potato at about three parts in five so it holds together.

Can I make bubble and squeak without leftovers?

Yes. Boil 600g of floury potatoes, such as Maris Piper or King Edward, and your vegetables until tender, then drain them well. Cool them, get them into the fridge within one to two hours, and make the bubble and squeak once they are completely cold. Warm, freshly boiled potato falls apart in the pan.

Can I reheat leftover bubble and squeak?

Not when it is made from Christmas leftovers. Frying it was the vegetables’ one reheat, so make what you will eat at this meal. If you have made too much mixture, take some out before you fry, shape it into cakes and freeze them, or keep them covered in the fridge and fry them inside the two days.

Final word from me

Bubble and squeak is a thrifty dish and a generous one, and Boxing Day is made for it. The big cooking is done, and all anybody wants is something hot and crisp with an egg on top.

Keep the leftovers cold, get the pan hot, and leave it alone long enough to hear the squeak settle down. Then turn it, check the middle and crack the eggs. Christmas Day was the hard work. Boxing Day is one pan and a jar on the table.

JP