by Michael King

Created on: January 23, 2010

Bangers and Mash! A quick google search will reveal a music company, umpteen forums and websites and about 1000 different recipes. I guess it's a rather crass assumption to talk only about the food, but given the context of this article, I think it'd be a good idea.

Bangers and mash is an institution of British cooking, delicious, quick and cheap. Everything we love. It's not too unhealthy either. However, for those abroad I'll translate; Bangers and Mash=Sausage and Mashed potato. Though the reason for the term "mash" is fairly obvious the naming of "bangers" seems a bit odd.

It all comes down, as most things do, to explosions. Old bangers especially, have a rather awkward tendency to explode or "bang" when submitted to high temperatures. This is mostly down to the fact that a normal sausage is essentially a cylindrical lump of meat and fat with rounded ends and a shrink wrapped in some sort of edible cling film. So naturally, when we submit our food to hundreds of degrees of heat, such an object is quite likely to explode, seems obvious doesn't it?

However, as the first sausage conneisseurs must have discovered, they are quite prone to "banging" and thus we have to prick our sausages, what a chore! Though also, despite the horrific waste this must have caused, it has brought us a brilliant name for a brilliant British dish.

So that's what bangers and mash is, but what use is it to you? Well as a meal it's rather limited, slightly dry, depending on how healthy your mash is, and lacking any vegetables or dietary balance whatsoever. The solution, as I may have mentioned earlier, is thousands of recipes. Almost all including gravy I might add. Always have gravy with bangers and mash, always. Commonly one would divulge to have some vegetables on the side, more to feel politically correct than anything else, but this totally optional.

I suppose I could divulge into the most popular of these recipes and how they are prepared,etc. However, that would somewhat ruin the fun of the search, the hunt and the discovery of the perfect bangers and mash dish. Something Britains have been trying to do for centuries, without any success I might add.

Hopefully, this will have cleared up any doubt you might have about the illustrious world that is centered around bangers and mash, perhaps you will now join the music company or one of the many forums to add to your knowledge.

Learn more about this author, Michael King.
Click here to send this author comments or questions.