To OutMuffin McDonald's
I've always loved the McDonald's Egg McMuffin throughout my childhood. Paired with a hashbrown and coffee, it becomes the perfect portable breakfast whether you're on the road or on a deadline. It's even good cold, so feel free to stash it in the fridge for an early morning snack!
While I've mostly moved beyond eating fast food, I've never been able to replicate that balanced flavour of the 'sausage, egg, and cheese' breakfast trinity that the fast food giant has perfected to a tee.
My interest in the dish was reignited by Claire Saffitz's breakfast sandwich video last May. While highlighting the English Muffin recipe in her Dessert Person cookbook, the video was also a fun debut for a pork sausage patty recipe that otherwise couldn't make it into the book. Given the seemingly simple ingredients and the video to guide me through the steps, I figured that the humble breakfast sandwich was worth another look.
Deceptively Simple
The English muffins themselves are a simple bread recipe that require the mix, rise, and roll that most buns do. They're even more fun than most bread recipes because you fry them pancake-style on a skillet rather than tossing them in the oven. The recipe's time sinks lie in the rises: one hour at room temperature and 3-8 hours in the fridge. While not an issue in-itself, making the muffins for the breakfast sandwich specifically means planning a day or two ahead.
The breakfast sausage is a little more finicky. Since I don't have much prior experience working with ground pork, I'm usually thrown off by how difficult the fatty sausage mixture is to handle. Especially at room temperature, I often need to spread the meat in a baking pan so I can portion the meat evenly with a knife. I'm encouraged to form the patties quickly in prepared parchment dividers before they get too warm and unwieldy.
More than with ground beef, pork tends to turn irreversibly pebbly upon frying if it oxidises in the fridge for too long. Unfortunately, this behooves me to cook the patties immediately after forming them. In all, the breakfast sausage takes about an hour and 45 minutes of notably involved commitment.
In Focus, It Requires Too Much Focus
Final assembly is lightweight and fun, capitalising on all the prior setup. Warming the sausage patty (with a slice of American cheese on top, of course), cooking the eggs, and splitting English muffins for assembly can all happen in about 15 minutes.
The joy of holistically outdoing McDonald's at home can't be understated. However, I'm not sure it was worth the time invested and the ingredients stored on standby to get there.
Perhaps the Egg McMuffin's strengths can only be realised through the restaurant scale that makes it. McDonald's has, teams of people, preservatives, and industrial cooking equipment at its back to make this breakfast sandwich and more. Lacking all that, lone home chefs like me have no choice but to put time and organisation to beat the titan at its own game.
I can see why Claire Saffitz didn't include the breakfast sausage and sandwich recipe in the book. Cooking the sandwich to completion is a tremendous achievement regardless of experience. However, it's difficult for it to feel like a true treat given all the blood, seat, and tears you put in have no fast-food kitchen to hide behind.
