This Is The Best Fast Food Breakfast Sandwich

Breakfast is the one meal we're most likely to eat on the run (or with one hand on the wheel), yet paradoxically, it can also be one of the least portable. Ever try balancing a bowl of cereal while driving? A plate of bacon and eggs won't fare much better, nor will a stack of pancakes. You could just go the coffee-only route — but it turns out that drinking coffee on an empty stomach is just asking for trouble. 

Luckily, some genius finally came up with the idea the world had been waiting for — the breakfast sandwich. Brilliant! This grab-and-go meal may not always be the healthiest option, but it'll put something in your belly so you don't have to start the day hangry.

There are many different types of breakfast sandwiches: wraps, burritos, biscuit sandwiches, croissant-wiches, bagel sandwiches, English muffin sandwiches, pancake sandwiches, donut sandwiches, and let's not forget the infamous (now discontinued) waffle taco. There are even breakfast sandwiches made with plain old bread (go figure). Fillings may include any or all of the following: eggs, cheese, sausage, bacon, ham, chicken, steak, and veggies.

With such a wide range of options, it's hard to single one out as the very best. One breakfast sandwich, however, has been chosen best of the best by several major review sites as well as topping a public opinion poll — and you may be shocked to hear, it's none other than the good old Egg McMuffin!

Introduced in 1971, the Egg McMuffin may well be the oldest breakfast sandwich available from any fast food chain, but it still has numerous fans. Business Insider's reviewer tested the signature breakfast sandwiches from Starbucks, Burger King, Wendy's, Dunkin', and Chick-fil-A as well as McDonald's, and found the Egg McMuffin to be "by far the tastiest and most well-balanced sandwich," and, at just 290 calories, not quite the diet-buster you might assume. 

Insider stuck to tasting only sausage, egg, and cheese sandwiches and their review put the Sausage McMuffin at a close second behind Chick-fil-A's, but said that for anyone preferring an English muffin to a biscuit, it would be the best choice. They described the McMuffin's blend of texture and taste as simply "perfect." 

Finally, Ranker, polling the general public, found the Sausage McMuffin with Egg to be the favorite breakfast sandwich and second-favorite breakfast item overall — it came in behind another McDonald's breakfast menu item, the chain's ever-popular hash browns.

McDonald's may not have the most exciting burger as of late, at least not when compared to 'newer' and somewhat smaller-scale chains like Shake Shack, In-N-Out, and Five Guys. But in a few areas they always come out on top. They are the undisputed king of french fries, and their dominance also extends to a different type of potato preparation: their hash browns. Those employ a similar grease-salt-crunch alchemy, leading them to be rated the best in a recent survey.

When you've got a winning breakfast sandwich, great hash browns, and, let's not forget, a pretty darn decent cup of coffee (McDonald's came in second in our fast food coffee poll, behind only Dunkin'), your morning meal dominance is pretty much assured. Especially when 29,000 people respond to a Mashed survey asking who serves up the best early day meal, and McD's was again the runaway winner, with 59% of the vote.

It turns out 2020 was a tough year for McDonalds, as it was for all of us. They had to close their dining rooms and they also streamlined their menu to ease the transition into the new drive-thru-only format, taking away the all-day breakfast option. Even in the midst of such chaos, however, McDonald's felt our pain at being homebound, lonely, bored, and deprived of our favorite breakfast sandwich. While they couldn't help with the first few problems, they felt obliged to tackle our lack of McMuffins by releasing the recipe. That way, we could all spend some quality time in the kitchen creating DIY Mickey D's breakfasts right from home.

The recipe was given out by McDonald's U.K. and originally published in the Daily Mail. There doesn't appear to be any difference between the British and American Mickey D's breakfast sandwiches, although if you're a stickler for exact measurements, you may be mildly annoyed to realize that 75 grams of sausage meat translates to 2.645 ounces. It won't make the slightest bit of difference, though, if you "cheat" and go with 2.5 ounces, instead. To make the sandwich, simply toast an English muffin, fry the sausage patty, poach an egg, then assemble the sandwich like so: The bottom muffin half topped with a slice of American cheese, then the sausage, egg, and top bun. If you really want to do it up right, McDonald's also provides a recipe for their famous hash browns, and you can even buy McCafé coffee at the store in bagged and K-Cup form.