Bangers and Mash from the Tomb Raider Cookbook

The next recipe that caught my eye from the Tomb Raider Cookbook was another UK favorite and pub classic, Bangers and Mash. For those not in the know, it's a plate of pork sausages ("bangers") with mashed potato, commonly served with an onion gravy and peas. I regretfully didn't have some when I visited London in the summer of 2025, though I hope to go back and enjoy a plate of it. In the meantime, I made it myself. It's another dish in the cookbook that hasn't necessarily been eaten by Lara in any of the Tomb Raider games or other media, but is quintessentially British.

Aside from being Lara Croft's home country and where she spends her time in between adventures, it's also the setting of many of her adventures. Croft Manor, her home in Surrey, is playable in many of the Tomb Raider games, with intruders attacking her in it at the end of Tomb Raider II. In Tomb Raider III, Lara explores London, including the Thames Wharf, Aldwych, Lud's Gate (inspired by the real Ludgate in the city) and the All Hallows cathedral. In Tomb Raider: Legend, Lara explores an abandoned Camelot museum in Cornwall, only to find the actual tomb of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table buried below it.

The recipe as a whole is quite generous with its portions. It calls for 8 pork sausages and 8 potatoes. I can only buy packs of 5, and didn't want to buy two packs, then have to freeze the other two or cook them in something, and I was only cooking for two the night I made this. Similarly, I only had 6 potatoes in my pantry. Both were more than enough for my purposes. I made the same amount of gravy because I love to eat leftover sauce with bread or stir it into pasta or rice.

My original intent was to cook them with sauteed cabbage, except my mother, who ate this with me, was having digestive issues that day. To not aggravate them with a cruciferous vegetable, I chose to cook peas instead. Much more authentic of a side dish anyway. I simply warmed them up with butter, salt and pepper, they don't need anything else.

I wasn't sure what pan I should cook them in. I settled on a cast iron skillet since I could both sear the sausages in it and then make the gravy enhanced with their fond (the brown bits). The recipe calls for you to brown them in a tablespoon of butter. That's not very much fat, and the sausages I bought were quite lean, so the skillet ended up getting dry and smoking. I hate using the hood fan, though I had to bump it up to level two to clear away all the smoke. Once I put the beef stock into the skillet for the gravy, the smoke went away.

They turned out deliciously! The sausages were perfectly cooked, not dry (even though the pan was), and that flavorful gravy was begging to be absorbed into some buttery mash. It's so easy, why wouldn't you make them yourself at home?

If you want to make this recipe for Bangers and Mash yourself, you can find it in Tomb Raider: The Official Cookbook and Travel Guide.