The Working Man's Breakfast

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Apparently I need to drink more beer.

Love that line at the end, "whether it's today or 300 years ago." We need to be reminded that people of the past were people just like us.

“Why would peasants eat bread, cheese and beer for breakfast?” My retort: “why wouldn’t you??” lol sounds like a great breakfast to me.

I grew up in Vietnam and I grew up on sticky rice, so the idea of having oatmeal for breakfast, even though it feels weird, when I really think about it, it's similar to my little sack of sticky rice I used to have every breakfast. Sticky rice with a bit of pork floss (pork meat well seasoned, cooked until basically bone dry, then shredded and dried out even more to preserve), and a few slices of sausage with a dash of soy sauce is the go to breakfast here. Oat does not grow in South East Asia so it is not common, and imported oatmeal is super expensive so you'll only see it in fancy restaurants that serve woke healthy acai bowls or something. It's funny how the same thing is treated differently in different places.

In Ireland, oatmeal made with water used to be called "stirabout". With milk, porridge.

Back in high school, I usually ate Quaker insta oats original in boiled water for breakfast. No milk, no butter, no sugar or salt. It didn't taste good, but it didn't taste bad either. No idea I was into historical cooking so long ago.

We really need to make breakfast beers a thing again

My grandfather and uncle were miners. For breakfast they ate fried potatoes, fried eggs, sausages, cutlets, and soup. They had lunch in a deep mine and it consisted of a couple of sandwiches with coffee or tea.

Biscuits and gravy. Love eggs and sausage, but as a southerner, Biscuits and gravy is a gift

I often have oatmeal for breakfast. Filling and easy to cook. Some things don't change with time.

I'm Turkish and I can confirm you about oatmeal, butter, eggs and cheese was pretty typical breakfast selections. In very busy days boiled milk and a little honey in it was my grandfather's breakfast. Also sometimes he was just smoking and having coffee if previous day he ate a lot. Usually he was having his coffee around noon after lunch with some chicken/ lamb and rice pilav and salty pickles. He was not drinking alcohol due to his religion but at night many people was drinking beer, wine or raki with a little meat and cheese as "meze". The Turkish breakfast promoted today only existed in high class as a way to show off and for common folk it was like that on important days like wedding, some friends gathering, soldier ceremony or some islamic feasts.

I am sure that firewood greatly contribute to the flavor. I myself grew up in a place where we had to cook our breakfast over coal and it was good. Mostly boiled root vegetables (yuca, malanga, ñame) sprinkled with pork lard and café con leche (milk with coffee). That was more than often. I live now in the US and see myself having that for breakfast some weekends. I save the bacon grease for the ocasion.

This was strangely comforting. I only ever have black coffee, toast with peanut butter or oatmeal in the winter for breakfast. My ancestors were all farmers and miners. It’s nice to know I could have comfortably shared a breakfast with them.

When I was a child in Japan, a good breakfast is natto on rice and miso soup. Bacon and egg would be a great addition though.

I am somehow surprised they did not mention or consume honey. It was still cheaper than cane sugar and was already popular and widely used by then and goes extremely well with oatmeal. Honey did not require special storage conditions. Honey cakes were popular since ancient Greeks and Roman times.

As someone from the UK. The thing that separates gruel from porridge is that gruel is thinner but it's also savoury. The fat or "drippings" from the last night's meal is added to the pot. Many of us in the north still enjoy lardy toast. Which is re-heating all of complex animal and vegetable remnants from a Sunday roast at the bottom of yesterday's roasting tin and dropping in bread that's gone hard over the weekend. It sounds gross but trust me... it's amazing!

My dad as a farmer had what I consider to be a working man’s breakfast most every day. Around 5am before going out to get the cows in for milking he would have a couple of sandwiches of bread and jam or peanut butter and a hot drink, then after finishing the dairy he would have a cereal like Weetbix or porridge and another hot drink. Very simple but enabled him to continue heavy work or activities through the morning until lunch. Sometimes morning tea break as well. Good show as always and very enjoyable, thanks

Every word he says about the name of the food, just makes me hungry. Milk, bread, bacon, eggs.. Lord have mercy.

I grew up in Virginia, we had all sorts of things for breakfast depending on the time of year. I remember my grandmother, an Appalachian woman, would eat a wedge of homemade cornbread broken up into buttermilk for breakfast at times. The weirdest thing we would eat, to most outsiders, would be a basic Oyster Stew at breakfast. It was commonly served on Christmas Morning but that never stopped us from having it through out the year.