A proper pub kitchen does not show off. It takes cheap, honest ingredients and gives them time, heat and seasoning until they taste of something worth sitting down for. That is the whole trick, and it is one any home cook can learn. The dishes below are the backbone of the British pub menu. Master them and you will never be short of a reason to invite people round.

Start With Respect for the Ingredients

Pub cooking fails far more often through poor shopping than poor technique. A pie made with supermarket value beef and a thin, over-hopped ale will taste of disappointment no matter how carefully you braise it.

• Buy meat with collagen: chuck, shin, oxtail, short rib, shoulder. These cuts reward long, wet cooking.
• Buy ale you would drink: a best bitter, a brown ale or a dark mild. Save the heavily hopped IPA for the glass.
• Buy fat and salt: proper butter, dripping, lard, sea salt. Low-fat versions of pub food are an oxymoron.
• Buy in season: roots and brassicas through the winter, peas, broad beans and salad in summer.

Steak and Ale Pie: The Art of the Long Braise

This is the dish that separates a cook from a reheater. Cut 1kg of chuck or shin into 3cm cubes, toss in seasoned flour, then brown hard in batches in a heavy casserole with a little dripping. Crowd the pan and the meat steams; give it room and you build the flavour base.

Soften two sliced onions and a couple of carrots in the same pan, return the meat, add 500ml of best bitter, 300ml of beef stock, a bay leaf, a few sprigs of thyme and a splash of Worcestershire sauce. Bring to a simmer, cover, then braise at 150°C for two and a half to three hours. The meat should give way to a spoon. Uncover for the last half hour if the sauce is loose, then cool the filling completely — warm filling will wreck your pastry.

For the top, rough puff or a well-made shortcrust both work. Egg-wash the rim, seal, glaze the lid, cut a steam hole and bake at 200°C for 25 to 30 minutes until deep gold. Season the filling only after it has reduced, or you will over-salt it.

Ploughman's Lunch: Buying Well Is the Recipe

There is no cooking here, which is exactly why it is unforgiving. A ploughman's is a test of your shopping, your knife skills and your refusal to cut corners.

• Cheese: a mature, crumbly Cheddar, a good Stilton or a creamy Lancashire. Take it out of the fridge an hour before serving.
• Pork: thick-cut ham off the bone, or a slice of good pork pie with its jelly intact.
• Bread: a crusty bloomer or granary loaf, cut thick, with salted butter.
• Accompaniments: pickled onions, chutney, celery, a sharp apple, watercress, pickled eggs.

Dress the salad leaves lightly with a mustard vinaigrette rather than pouring on mayonnaise. Arrange everything so it looks generous, and add a pot of mustard. That is the whole dish.

Bangers and Mash: Sausages, Gravy and Patience

Choose sausages with at least 80 per cent pork and a coarse grind. Never prick them — you want the fat inside, not on the tray. Roast at 180°C for about 25 minutes, turning once, or fry gently so the skins blister without splitting.

For the mash, boil Maris Piper or King Edward potatoes in well-salted water until a knife slides through, then drain and let them steam dry for two minutes. Rice or mash them while hot with warmed milk and plenty of butter. Work them briefly; over-mashing turns them gluey.

The gravy is where the dish is won. Cook two thinly sliced onions in butter over a low heat for a full 25 minutes until sweet and dark, stir in a tablespoon of flour, then add 400ml of stock, a splash of ale and a teaspoon of Worcestershire sauce. Simmer for ten minutes and taste for salt. Pour over the sausages and mash in a deep bowl, and serve with buttered peas.

Sunday Roast: The Yorkshire Pudding Test

A roast dinner is really four dishes timed to land together, so write the timings down. For beef, take a topside or sirloin out of the fridge an hour ahead, roast at 220°C for 20 minutes, then drop to 180°C and allow 15 minutes per 500g for rare. Rest it, loosely tented, for at least 20 minutes while you finish everything else.

Yorkshire puddings are simple once you accept two rules. Use equal volumes of plain flour, egg and milk, whisk to a smooth batter and rest it for at least 30 minutes. Then get the fat in the tin genuinely smoking hot at 220°C before you pour anything in. Bake for 20 minutes without opening the door. Roast potatoes follow the same logic: parboil peeled Maris Pipers for eight minutes, drain, shake until the edges roughen, then roast in hot dripping for 45 to 50 minutes. Make the gravy in the roasting tin with a spoonful of flour, stock and a splash of ale, scraping up every dark bit.

Rules That Apply to Every Dish

• Season at the end. Long cooking concentrates salt; taste before you adjust.
• Warm your plates. Pub food goes cold fast, and cold plates undo an hour of work.
• Cook more than you need. Braises, pies and gravies all improve overnight, and a pie filling in the fridge is a supper waiting to happen.
• Match the ale to the plate. A bitter with pie, a dark mild with sausages, a dry cider with pork.

None of this is difficult. It is simply cooking that refuses to hurry, and that is precisely what makes it worth mastering.