Wilder Shaw / Cheapism
If a breakfast sandwich is what you crave, you might not always have time to get to a Starbucks or a fast-food joint in the morning. To fry yourself a fresh egg and melt some cheese might be a little too time-consuming, and that’s where frozen breakfast sandwiches come in.
Are any of them worth your time? Do they heat up properly in the microwave? I grabbed seven popular brands and ranked them — here's what I discovered.
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In the frozen breakfast sandwich game, the heating instructions are a roll of the dice. The microwave simply isn’t capable of providing the type of heat you need to make one of these taste fresh. You’re looking at a vast range of quality control.
Swaggerty’s came out the best by a landslide. The cheese was melty and dripping, and the egg and sausage were heated all the way through to the middle, which ended up being a huge issue with some of the other brands. The egg itself does look somewhat like a pineapple, which is very unappealing. But if you close your eyes, this is just about as good as a fast-food biscuit sandwich. The biscuit itself is a little bit fake-tasting since it doesn’t crumble the way a normal biscuit does, but in my opinion, that’s a good thing.
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Let me say the good things first, because I need to rant after I’m done. This tastes very good, and the microwave instructions, if you’re willing to put up with a round of defrosting, worked perfectly. Everything was nicely heated through to the middle, and the egg looks and tastes real. The box alleges that the biscuit is a cheddar biscuit, which is nice, though I’m not sure I could really pick up on any of that flavor. Mason Dixie is an all-around good choice, if you can score one.
As for the conventional oven instructions they’ve included, I can’t really believe my eyes. It’s a doozy of a prep list, and I can’t fathom a person on the planet with the time and patience required to do it. First, you are to preheat your oven to 375 degrees Fahrenheit. Then, you are to split up the sandwich into two parts (the top bun and egg, and the bottom bun and sausage) and wrap them individually in aluminum foil. You must then bake each of the foil halves for a whopping TWENTY-SIX minutes. Then you’ve got to carefully unwrap each half and re-assemble your sandwich.
Who has the time? If you’ve got nearly a half hour to spend making breakfast, you can probably do better than a mini breakfast sandwich. I have no question I could make a better sandwich from scratch in a third of the time.
Anyways, this tastes great and you should use the microwave to make it.
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If you’re only bringing one ingredient to the table, you better make sure it’s a good one. That’s what Old Folks is up to; these sandwiches each contain one tiny, little pork patty. I would not refer to the McDonald’s-bun-meets-the-sweetness-of-a-King’s-Hawaiian-roll bread that they’re served on “biscuits,” but other than that, I’m super into these little dudes.
There is, surprisingly, a ton of flavor in the pork patties. The quarter-sized discs are decently spicy and well-seasoned. The two-pack is a perfect serving. I have a feeling I’ll buy these again.
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I haven’t seen many frozen pitas in my time, but I think this is a fun concept. What I love most is the simplicity; all we’re dealing with here is egg, cheese, and bacon. Sure, the bacon gets a little chewy in the microwave, but overall this works very well. The cheese dries up more quickly than I’d like, so don’t over-microwave this one.
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This is a lot like its Starbucks counterpart. Unfortunately for GFMS, I love that wrap, and this doesn’t quite measure up. Double unfortunately, the microwave instructions suck, and this came out on rubbery bread with cold ingredients in the middle. Triple unfortunately, it was the worst type of cold — the type of cold where it's starting to melt and you’ve just got a puddle of cold water in the center.
The flavor here is pretty tasty as a whole, but the thing is cursed. Microwave it more than the instructions say, and you’ll eliminate the cold center, but you’ll send the flatbread even farther down the road towards its rubbery fate. Catch-22, I’m afraid.
Related: I Ranked 7 Starbucks Breakfast Sandwiches, and You Probably Already Know Which One Is the Best
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I was surprised to see Jimmy Dean land this low, considering ol' Jimbo has the market cornered in a way you wouldn’t believe. In nearly every store’s frozen section, Jimmy Dean occupies almost quadruple the space that the other brands do combined. There are countless Jimmy Dean options, so I decided to go with the most basic one I could find.
Not great. The flavor was mediocre, but the biggest issue was how ice-cold in the middle the sandwich was. I think letting these thaw overnight in the fridge might be a good move, because the English muffin actually came out pretty well, without too much of an unnatural chew. I expected better from the industry’s leading titan.
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I guess I just don’t understand what this is all about. I can’t for the life of me understand why this sandwich has a plant-based meat in addition to real cheese and real egg. I’m not into this jackfruit patty, but I’m rarely into jackfruit. The white Boursin-esque cheese doesn’t work too well for me either, especially since it seems to be the one thing that did not get hot in the microwave, despite the fact that I defrosted the sandwich to the package’s specifications and heated it exactly as I was told. Thanks, but no thanks.