Food & Drink

REVIEWED: The breakfast sandwich maker you don’t need but might want, for kicks

Ingredients we used: english muffins, cheddar cheese, sausage patties, bagels, eggs, bacon.

Ingredients we used: english muffins, cheddar cheese, sausage patties, bagels, eggs, bacon. (Tamara Beckwith/NY POST)

The bottom ring-mold of the breakfast sandwich maker filled with the bottom of an English muffin followed by a layer of bacon and finally three strips of sharp cheddar cheese.

The bottom ring-mold of the breakfast sandwich maker filled with the bottom of an English muffin followed by a layer of bacon and finally three strips of sharp cheddar cheese. (Tamara Beckwith/NY POST)

A raw egg sits inside the second ring-mold as the top of an english muffin is placed on top of it. The cooking plate underneath the egg is the machine's party trick: it rotates out of the machine once the egg is done cooking.

A raw egg sits inside the second ring-mold as the top of an english muffin is placed on top of it. The cooking plate underneath the egg is the machine’s party trick: it rotates out of the machine once the egg is done cooking. (Tamara Beckwith/NY POST)

After rotating the egg cooking plate out from under the egg, the sandwich is completed.

After rotating the egg cooking plate out from under the egg, the sandwich is completed. (Tamara Beckwith/NY POST)

The completed bacon, egg, and cheese breakfast sandwich sits gloriously in front of the breakfast sandwich maker which has its rotating egg cooking plate exposed in all of its magnificence.

The completed bacon, egg, and cheese breakfast sandwich sits gloriously in front of the breakfast sandwich maker which has its rotating egg cooking plate exposed in all of its magnificence. (Tamara Beckwith/NY POST)

Breakfast sandwiches are delicious, contain three major food groups (bread, cheese, bacon), and are able to be consumed on the go.

Basically, they are the perfect morning food.

Sadly, they are a pain to make at home because each ingredient necessitates it’s own cooking device which means that there’s a lot of cleaning to do after one has made a homemade breakfast sandwich.

Because of the threat of cleaning, or maybe out of pure laziness, many sandwich craving people therefore opt for a bacon, egg and cheese sandwich purchased at a bodega or maybe even McDonald’s Egg McMuffin.

However, a new $29.99 Breakfast Sandwich Maker from Hamilton Beach has hit the market that promises to take the hassle out of homemade.

With “easy” plastered on the front of the box three times, the maker promises “delicious breakfast sandwiches in the comfort of your own home” which are “ready in five minutes.”

Such a claim seems way too good to be true, but it turns out that the McMuffin of your dreams is a little more than five minutes away, and you get a party trick thrown in with your sandwich for good measure.

To start the cooking process, I plugged in the tiny waffle maker looking device and waited for the green ready light to illuminate.

While that happened I prepped an english muffin, sliced up some cheddar cheese, and ran into the maker’s first major drawback — it does not cook breakfast meat, it only reheats it.

Dejected, I took my raw bacon, headed to the microwave, and cooked it for 5 minutes on high. Suffice it to say, the maker is not an all-in-one breakfast sandwich champion and my bacon was not as crispy as I would have liked.

With the cooked bacon in hand I followed the “Quick Start” instructions that came with the maker.

The bottom half of my muffin was the first layer placed down inside a perfectly sized non-stick ring-mold and on top of that I placed the cooked bacon and then a layer of sharp cheddar cheese.

With the bottom full, I lowered the top ring-mold and “cooking plate” into place. I cracked an egg into the ring which is on top of the “cooking plate,” and punctured the yoke as per the instructions. I then put the top of the muffin directly onto the raw egg.

And yes, it’s as weird as it sounds.

Closing the lid, I waited five excruciating minutes for the sandwich to cook.

When the five minutes were over the maker really came into it’s own. That’s because the top ring-mold, where the egg was cooked, contains a secret — the cooking plate rotates counter clockwise out of the machine which drops the egg and English muffin top into place on top of the cheese and bacon.

Once the trick was performed, I lifted the two ring molds and top of the machine up in unison, pushed down on the top of the muffin with a fork, and voila! I got a homemade Egg McMuffin!

That’s right, you do not get a homemade, homespun, homey tasting egg sandwich using the Breakfast Sandwich Maker.

Instead you get a “homemade,” not homespun, non-homey but delicious and warm ideal version of McDonald’s flagship breakfast item.

And that’s not necessarily a bad thing because the sandwich had a solid structural integrity that is hard to achieve when you make a breakfast sandwich using pans and toasters. The eggs did not squish out when I bit into the sandwich, the bacon did not go sliding all over the place, and the bread didn’t break apart into a sloppy mess.

Instead, bite after bite of sandwich was consumed and it stayed together, strong and proud.

So that’s the biggest culinary benefit of using the Breakfast Sandwich Maker: sandwich structural integrity.

Another great part of the maker is that you only have one thing to clean, the ring-molds and “cooking plate.” Ingeniously, the entire ring-mold and “cooking plate” apparatus easily comes out of the maker and is simple to clean by hand or in a dishwasher.

But the real crowning glory of this utterly unnecessary device is the swiveling egg cooking plate and grand reveal that occurs when the sandwich is done.

It got oohs and ahhs from every single hardened Post journalist who saw it done.

But that might have had more to do with the smell of hot bacon that filled the air.