Breakfast is the one meal we're most likely to eat on the run — weirdly enough, though, it's
also the least portable. Have you ever actually tried to balance a bowl of cereal while driving?
Yeah. A plate of bacon and eggs won't fare much better, either, nor will a stack of pancakes.
You could just go the coffee-only route, of course, but that's hardly going to set you
up right for the rest of the day. Luckily, some genius long ago finally came up with the idea
the world had been waiting for: the breakfast sandwich. This grab-and-go
meal may not always be the healthiest option, but it'll certainly do in a pinch.
Fast food chains offer all kinds of breakfast sandwiches,
so it can be difficult to single out one above the rest. One particular breakfast sandwich,
however, has been chosen best of the best by several major review sites as well as topping
a public opinion poll. Yes, you guessed it — it's the good ol' Egg McMuffin.
Introduced back in 1971, the Egg McMuffin may well be the oldest breakfast sandwich
available from any fast food chain, but it still has whole hordes of fans to this
day. In an article testing various signature breakfast sandwiches from different chains,
Business Insider's reviewer visited Starbucks, Burger King, Wendy's, Dunkin', Chick-fil-A, and
McDonald's. They found the Egg McMuffin to be both the tastiest and the most well-balanced sandwich.
Even better, at just 290 calories, it's not quite the diet-buster you might assume, either.
Insider stuck to tasting only sausage, egg, and cheese sandwiches for their piece.
They put the Sausage McMuffin at a close second behind Chick-fil-A's version of the sandwich,
but said that for anyone preferring an English muffin to a biscuit,
it would probably be the best choice. They also described the McMuffin's blend of
texture and taste as simply "perfect" — and it's hard to argue with that.
The website Ranker, polling the general public, found the Sausage McMuffin with Egg to be the
favorite breakfast sandwich and second-favorite breakfast item overall. In that regard, it came
in just behind another McDonald's breakfast menu item: the chain's ever-popular hash browns. Yes,
McDonald's may be renowned for classic items such as the Big Mac or those iconic
golden french fries, but the company is also world-famous for its hash browns.
These pieces of pure breakfast joy employ a similar grease-salt-crunch alchemy as the fries,
and if social media is anything to be believed, they've gained quite the following.
When you've got a winning breakfast sandwich, great hash browns, and a pretty darn decent cup
of coffee too, it's fair to say that your morning meal dominance is pretty much assured. So maybe
it's no surprise that, when Mashed ran a survey asking who serves up the best fast food breakfast,
McD's was again the runaway winner. 29,000 people responded to the poll
and McDonald's won a staggering 59% of the vote.
Of course, the last few years haven't been that easy for McDonald's. In 2020, the chain had to
close its dining rooms, eventually streamlining the menu to ease the transition into the new
drive-thru-only format. As a result, the all-day breakfast option came to an end.
Even in the midst of such chaos, however, McDonald's at least showed some sympathy
towards fans of the McMuffin — by releasing an official recipe for this iconic menu item.
The recipe was released by McDonald's U.K., although there don't appear to be any significant
differences between the British and American McDonald's breakfast sandwiches. To make an
Egg McMuffin, you simply toast an English muffin, fry a sausage patty if you want it, poach an egg,
then assemble the sandwich like so: The bottom half of the muffin is topped with a slice of
American cheese, then the sausage, egg, and, finally, the top bun. If you really want to do
it up right, McDonald's also provides a recipe for its famous hash browns — and you can even
buy McCafé coffee at the store in bagged and K-Cup form. You'll never need to leave the house again.
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