Working weekend shifts, hungover or just an insatiable craving for one - the McDonald's breakfast is truly one of modern cuisines baffling gems.
Since lockdown started more than a month ago and McDonald's shut their doors and drive-thrus, McMuffin fans have been sobbing into their inferior cereal and toast with the hope of once again tasting the oddly satisfying rubbery egg, flat sausage and often dry toasted muffin.
I can't explain why we like it so much, but we do and over the weekend one of our reporters (me, Kathryn) decided to give making one at home a whirl.
It was easy getting hold of the egg, muffin and 'cheese' slices (the oranger the better.) but what about that flat sausage patty that goes against all we know about what a sausage should look like?
To the rescue is Aldi, with their ' Breakfast Pork Patties ' - which I spotted in the freezers of the budget supermarket before lockdown, but who needed them then?
Anyway, I can confirm that the 96% pork patties are closer in taste than I could have dreamed of, to be honest. Stack them in with the egg, cheese and in the muffin and you're onto a winner.
I know it's obvious, but here are the steps we followed.
1. Heat the grill to a medium heat and place the patties on some foil (you can also fry them, but they didn't lack taste from being grilled.)
2. Pop the sliced muffin in the toaster.
3. Put the patty under the grill and make sure you turn it occasionally. It takes between 8-10 minutes to cook.
4. In the meantime fry your egg in a little oil. We used one of those small frying pans which cooks one egg per time and makes the egg the right shape for this McMuffin. Or if you had one of those poaching pans with the individual pods, use one of them!
5. When ready place the cheese slice on the bottom then the patty, then the egg. We copied the order from McDonald's themselves.
6. Enjoy!
Much like the breakfast meal deal I enjoyed the McMuffin with a coffee and hash brown - but hash brown fries because they were all I had in the freezer. You can get these at Iceland, here.
