McDonald's Breakfast Hacks That Will Change Your Life

The first inkling of McDonald's breakfast started in the early 1970s, when Pittsburgh McDonald's owner Jim Delligatti started selling doughnuts at breakfast, according to CNN. A couple of years later, a California franchise owner named Herb Peterson created the Egg McMuffin, which McDonald's likens to "eggs benedict on the go." It proved incredibly popular and launched the fast food chain into breakfast history. McDonald's hasn't looked back since.

Today, McDonald's is famous for its breakfast menu options, so much so that breakfast is served all day at locations in the United States. While McDonald's fans have their favorites from the standard breakfast menu (with some clearly better than others), there is also a whole world of McDonald's breakfast hacks that turn the standard into something special.

Many of the best McDonald's breakfast hacks simply take two standard orders and combine them into one sandwich. Others are from the dark days before McDonald's offered all-day breakfast, meaning that these items used to only be available at a select time of day. That led to some interesting secret menu items like the "Mc10:35", NPR reports. Regardless, these are all worth a try. And while you can take a leap and try asking for some of these breakfast hacks by name, your safest bet is to order the components yourself and get to creating.

These are the best McDonald's breakfast hacks that you need to start your day, no matter what time your exact day begins.

McDonald's debuted the Triple Breakfast Stack in the United States in 2018 (via McDonald's). The sandwich had two sausage patties, two slices of American cheese, thick-cut applewood smoked bacon, and egg. It came with the option of one of three different kinds of bread – the McMuffin, McGriddle, or biscuits – as your bun.

"People have been hacking our menu for years — so much so that it's inspired our new Triple Breakfast Stacks," McDonald's Manager of Culinary Innovation Chef Mike Haracz said via Thrillist. "We love seeing the fun ways our customers and McDonald's crew have been creating their own takes on our classics. We can't wait to see what they come up with next — you never know what might end up on our menu."

While you can find the Triple Breakfast Stack on the McDonald's website, it comes with the disclaimer that it's available only "at participating McDonald's for a limited time." Neither is it on McDonald's breakfast menu. This means that it's once again up to fans to hack their way to a beloved Triple Breakfast Stack. To make one, order your sandwich of choice — either a Sausage McMuffin with Egg; Sausage, Egg, and Cheese McGriddle; or Sausage Biscuit with Egg — and then ask to add extra sausage and bacon. If you went with the biscuit option, remember to add cheese, too. It's not as easy as ordering a Triple Stack, but it gets the job done.

Few breakfast meals perfectly toe the line of sweet and savory like chicken and waffles. Something about rich maple syrup and sweet, fluffy bread just makes it the perfect match for salty fried chicken. While McDonald's doesn't have the real thing (waffles aren't even available at the chain), it is possible to get a close McDonald's version of chicken and waffles by modifying a regular breakfast order.

It all starts with the McGriddle. The maple-flavored griddle pancakes are sweet without being sticky, thanks to some cunning engineering, as Wired reports. Sausage is the meat of choice if you go off of the menu, but you can order a Hot 'N Spicy McChicken Biscuit and swap the protein for a spicy chicken and waffles version. McDonald's briefly served a Chicken McGriddle, which made the whole process easier. However, the chain no longer features it on the standard menu.

It's possible to take this chicken and waffles approach to a bigger meal as well. On Reddit, a former employee said that the best breakfast order was a Big Breakfast With Hotcakes, which has hotcakes, sausage, a biscuit, eggs, and hash browns. Then, replace the sausage with chicken and the biscuit with a McGriddle. The result is a whole meal reminiscent of classic chicken and waffles that will keep you full for more hours than you'd probably like to admit.

Not all eggs are equal at McDonald's. In fact, there are a number of different types of eggs that you could get, depending on your order, McDonald's says. For scrambled eggs, a pre-made liquid egg mixture is used. The folded eggs of Bacon, Egg & Cheese Biscuit fame "are made with liquid eggs that are pre-cooked and folded before being flash frozen by our suppliers" and then cooked on the grill at the McDonald's location. The Sausage Burritos use a similar pre-cooked liquid egg mixture with the sausage, tomatoes, green chiles, onions, and seasoning. It's also flash-frozen by McDonald's suppliers.

Then, there's the round egg, which is a USDA Grade A egg that's cracked into an egg ring to cook. McDonald's calls the egg ring "an ingenious tool" that makes sure the egg "effortlessly fits the English muffin and is easy to hold when eating." It's also, notably, the only fresh cracked egg in the lineup. So, if you prefer your eggs to come straight out of the shell rather than a pre-mixed container, ask to substitute a round egg.

For McDonald's dedicated egg lovers, you can feel better about the sourcing of said eggs in the future. By 2025, McDonald's says that it will source only cage-free eggs in the U.S. and Canada. That's a pretty big deal, considering the fast food giant uses about 2 billion eggs in the U.S. every year.

Getting your McDonald's hash browns extra crispy isn't the only thing you should be doing with potato products in order to make the most of your McDonald's breakfast. One of the most popular McDonald's breakfast orders, the McMuffin, is made all the better with the addition of a hash brown inside of the sandwich.

McDonald's calls this modification the "Menu Remix #82." The construction is surprisingly easy, in fact being more simple than making a peanut butter and jelly sandwich at home. To get the "Menu Remix #82", first order a McMuffin and a hash brown patty. Then, take the top off the McMuffin, place the hash brown inside, and then put the English muffin top back on. That's all there is to it. While the whole construction sounds simple, the flavor really delivers. McDonald's doesn't make 15-second how-to videos for just any of their customer favorite breakfast hacks, after all.

If this hack is something you enjoy, then don't limit yourself to just reworking McMuffins. Throw hash browns on burgers or bagels, too. The sky's the limit.

If you really enjoy the McDonald's hash browns, then there's more you can do with them than ask for extra crispy hash browns and adding the patties into breakfast sandwiches and burgers. This one is for the ultimate McDonald's hash brown lover, who will rejoice at the prospect of using hash brown patties themselves as the bun. If you want to try this McDonald's menu hack, order the extra-crispy hash browns if you can. This will ensure that the hash browns are sturdy enough to carry the weight of a sandwich.

According to the Twitter account of the radio station Jewel 92.5, in 2016, "some McDonald's restaurants in Canada are selling a hash brown burger and waffle fries combo." It apparently was not enough of a hit for the fast food chain to bring the sandwich south to the United States, but that shouldn't stop anyone from making their own version. All it really takes is adding two hash browns to your order and doing some light assembly. Just be prepared to eat quickly. Hash browns lack the structural integrity of English muffins, buns, or biscuits, so you may be racing against a slightly unstable sandwich.