The Best Fast Food Breakfast Sandwich, Hands Down

There are plenty of ways to make a breakfast sandwich. You can serve the signature egg, cheese, and sausage patty on toast, an English muffin, a bagel, or even a croissant. Perhaps you can get inventive and put the ingredients on delicious French toast or a hot dog bun. Many fast food establishments offer fresh takes on the delightful meal. During the morning hours, you can get steak, eggs, and cheese on a flatbread at Subway or a breakfast Crunchwrap with hash browns, sausage, cheese, and eggs at Taco Bell. The fun array of options calls for a need to try them all and rank them, which is exactly what Chowhound did.

To determine the best fast food breakfast sandwich, we ranked breakfast sandwiches from 11 different fast food restaurants, including Burger King, Sonic, and Carl's Jr. We evaluated each sandwich on the ingredient preparation and how it tasted in its entirety, awarding bonus points to the ones that reinvented the common flavors, which helped the winning sandwich shoot to the top.

Of all the morning meals, Chowhound placed the breakfast burger at Carl's Jr. at the top of the list, only narrowly beating Chick-fil-A's chicken, egg, and cheese biscuit. This breakfast sandwich is unlike the others we tried as it contains a beef patty. The burger is joined by bacon, egg, American cheese, hash browns, and ketchup on a hamburger bun. Not only did it win us over based on taste and uniqueness, but gave us a newfound appreciation for ketchup on breakfast sandwiches.

Carl's Jr. has an inventive breakfast menu

Carl's Jr.'s choice of meat on its breakfast sandwich helps it stand out, but this isn't the only unique offering on the menu. The chain has other unique breakfast items, including an early morning take on grilled cheese. The grilled cheese breakfast sandwich comes with grilled sausage or bacon, American cheese, Swiss cheese, and folded egg on sourdough toast. The cheeses are melted onto the bread, likening it to a grilled cheese. The fast food joint also offers a Monster Biscuit breakfast sandwich for meat lovers. This sandwich features both bacon and sausage, Swiss and American cheeses, and two eggs on a biscuit. It's large in size and packs flavor in every bite with its multiple meats and cheeses.

Finally, Carl's Jr. has breakfast options for those looking for something more familiar. The restaurant carries a sausage, egg, and cheese biscuit and a bacon, egg, and cheese biscuit. Venturing out of sandwich territory, the menu also features an array of breakfast burritos, one of which is loaded with potatoes, bacon, sausage, eggs, cheese, and fresh salsa. The other ditches the potatoes and offers steak as the meat selection, while the third option does away with the potatoes and salsa for a classic bacon, egg, and cheese burrito. All of these items can be turned into a combo with coffee and hash browns. However, the chain restaurant takes extra pride in its breakfast burger as it touts it as part of a "hangover helper" meal with water and hash browns.

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