The Breakfast Sandwich

Based on our other excursions into delicious early morning meals, it should come as no surprise that I prefer my breakfast hearty and savory over light and sweet. Pankcakes and cereal are all well and good, but I'll take an eggtastic breakfast skillet or omelet any day, thank you very much. These are by no means the only way to have a great breakfast based around eggs and sausage though. Another fine morning tradition is to put together a breakfast sandwich, using many of the same ingredients that would go into an omelet, but putting it on different kinds of bread.

Here we'll dive into three different variations on the same idea, first starting off with some sausage formed into circular patties.

This is a very basic version with just a single fried egg and some cheese melted on top of the sausage. I like my breakfast sandwiches with some hot sauce, which is getting poured on top.

These breakfast sandwiches were made with "ranch rolls" bought from the bakery in the local grocery store. Despite the name, these aren't ranch flavored, but rather are mid-sized loafs that are crisp on the outside and soft in the middle, especially when lightly baked in the oven for four or five minutes.

For a more traditional look, Megan went with a slice of American cheese in-between the egg and sausage patty.

While delicious, those sandwiches are pretty basic and no-frills. To jazz things up, we heated some strips of red pepper, orange pepper, and poblano on the skillet. For a more in-depth look at using peppers in your cooking, check out our recent pepper comparison guide, covering a range of peppers from most mild to most hot.

Instead of sausage, this time around we went with crispy strips of bacon and fried eggs, which go very well with the cooked peppers.

Switching it up fro the ranch roll, this breakfast sandwich is on a lightly toasted and buttered English muffin.

For our last breakfast sandwich variation, we decided to cook up some skillet potatoes to go on the side. Here we've peeled and diced a potato, which is getting cooked in oil with red pepper flakes, ghost pepper salt, and pepper.

We're again using sausage patties here. While pork, beef, or turkey are great, we've found that the "Gimme Lean" soy sausage actually has a really amazing taste and texture for breakfast meals like this.

This time around we went with scrambled eggs instead of fried, and wheat toast instead of a ranch roll or English muffin.

Finishing up this hearty and varied meal are our golden brown skillet potatoes and an English muffin slice with strawberry cream cheese. There is, of course, a mug of coffee with cream hiding out there in the background as well.

We've covered skillets, bakes, and sandwiches, but there's still more amazing ways to cook up a fantastic egg-based breakfast. Coming up in the near future we'll take a look at the greatest of mankind's creations: the breakfast burrito!

Moving away from breakfast, we'll be starting our culinary "world travel" next week, beginning with a Mexican soup that will knock your socks off, as well as the official kick off of Montana grilling season with a look at different ways to cook pork in all its many forms.