Sausage Egg McMuffin (Homemade)
A homemade sausage, egg, and cheese muffin sandwich with a seasoned pork patty and a tidy ring-mold egg.
Prep: 10 min · Cook: 15 min · Total: 25 min · Serves: 4 · Difficulty: Easy · Rating: 4.8/5 (458 reviews)
INSPIRED BY
This is the famous golden-arches breakfast sandwich, rebuilt in a home kitchen with a pork patty you season yourself. The ring mold for the egg is the one piece of gear that makes it look like the real thing, and the rest is just a better-tasting version of a familiar order.
Story
School mornings in our house are a controlled stampede. Two kids, one bathroom, and a bus that does not wait. We were spending a depressing amount of money on drive-thru breakfast sandwiches until I did the math one morning sitting in the pickup line and decided I could make these myself. The trick was figuring out how to make them fast enough to matter on a Tuesday. The sausage patty is the part that surprised me. I assumed I'd need to buy the pre-made breakfast sausage, but it turns out plain ground pork with salt, sage, pepper, garlic powder, and a little red pepper flake tastes exactly like the sausage you're picturing, for half the price. I mix a pound at a time. The seasoning ratio took me a few tries; my first batch was so heavy on sage it tasted like Thanksgiving stuffing, which my husband found hilarious and I did not. The mistake I want to spare you is the patty size. I made them the same diameter as the English muffin, they shrank as they cooked, and I ended up with a little meat coin in the middle of a big muffin. Now I smash them noticeably wider than the muffin. They shrink back to just the right size. The other thing is the egg: a ring mold gives you that tidy round egg, and a splash of water with the lid on steams the top so it sets without flipping. I make a batch on Sunday and wrap them individually, and they reheat in the microwave in about a minute wrapped in a paper towel. That's the real win. On the worst mornings I hand one to each kid as they go out the door and feel like I've actually fed them something. They're not identical to the drive-thru version, and honestly that's fine, because mine don't come with a fifteen-minute line. My four-year-old requests his "with no green stuff," which is the sage. I leave it in. He hasn't noticed yet.
By Casey
Ingredients
- 1 lb ground pork
- 1 tsp kosher salt
- 1 tsp dried sage
- 0.5 tsp black pepper
- 0.5 tsp garlic powder
- 0.25 tsp red pepper flakes
- 4 English muffins, split
- 4 large eggs
- 4 slices American cheese
- 2 tbsp butter
Instructions
- Mix the pork with salt, sage, pepper, garlic powder, and red pepper flakes. Divide into 4 balls and smash each into a thin patty wider than the muffin.
- Cook the patties in a skillet over medium-high 2 to 3 minutes per side until browned and cooked through. Set aside.
- Butter and toast the English muffins, cut-side down, until golden.
- Set buttered ring molds in the skillet over medium. Crack an egg into each, break the yolk if you want it set, and add a splash of water. Cover 3 minutes.
- Lay cheese on the hot patties to melt. Build each sandwich: muffin, patty with cheese, egg, top muffin.
Chef Tips
- Smash the patties wider than the muffin because they shrink as they cook. A patty that starts the same size as the muffin ends up a sad little disc that doesn't reach the edges. Wider is better here.
Cook's Notes
- **Sausage substitute:** No time to season pork? Use store-bought bulk breakfast sausage and skip the spice blend.
- **Make-ahead:** Build full sandwiches, wrap individually, and refrigerate up to 4 days or freeze up to 2 months.
- **Storage:** Reheat refrigerated sandwiches 60 to 90 seconds in the microwave wrapped in a paper towel; frozen ones need about 2 minutes.
- **Equipment:** A 3- to 4-inch egg ring gives the tidy round egg; a greased wide-mouth canning lid works in a pinch.
- **Common mistake:** Making patties the same size as the muffin leaves them shrunken; smash them wider than the muffin.
- **Doneness cue:** Pork patties are done at 160°F and no longer pink; the egg white should be fully set.
- **Egg tip:** A splash of water under a lid steams the egg top so it sets without flipping.