A Love Letter To The McGriddle

the greatest human invention before or since sliced bread

Reader, have you ever enjoyed a tasty little breakfast sandwich? A warm treat filled with happiness and smiles? If you haven’t had a McGriddle, your answer is no. Sorry to inform you that no other breakfast experience counts. Now, I about to simp so hard for a brand on main, dear reader, please forgive me. But, if ever there was a time to laud the inventive, yet often underappreciated, nature of McDonalds, it would be when discussing the Eighth Wonder of the World: The McGriddle.

If you’ve never had a McGriddle before, take my McHand and let me guide you on a McJourney into the greatest culinary masterpiece in human history and a genuine marvel of gastronomical engineering. If you have enjoyed the good fortune of eating a McGriddle, I dare you to read this post and not salivate at the prospect of giving good ol’ Ronald a few bucks tomorrow morning. Either way, this post will start humbly and then crescendo to reveal why, without a shadow of doubt, I know that the McGriddle rivals the likes of electricity, penicillin, or fire for mankind’s greatest innovation.

McJourney to the center of the McGriddle

Let me start by explaining that the only correct way to order a McGriddle is to order a “sausage McGriddle with cheese.” This is proper for two reasons. First, eggs are disgusting, and it is disgusting to like eggs. Someone reading this is gonna say “I like eggs, but yeah McDonalds’s eggs are bad!” I’m here to tell you: you’re wrong, 100% of eggs are bad. There will probably be a whole post on this topic later, so I won’t belabor the egg issue now, but they’re vile and would disgrace a McGriddle with their presence. The second reason to order as I have described is that it’s a slight menu hack, which makes your McGriddle more cost-effective. A “regular” McGriddle (with egg, yucky) currently costs about $4.49. A sausage McGriddle with cheese only costs $3.48. By removing the offending egg, you both get a proper McGriddle experience AND save a buck. Thank me after your next Micky D’s run.

Now, once we’ve ordered our respectable McGriddle, we turn to the cheese. The cheese is absolutely necessary to add to your sausage McGriddle, and it elevates the experience to a higher echelon of breakfast delicacies. American cheese is perhaps the United States’s greatest contribution to the basic food staples, which makes it only fitting to include on the world’s greatest breakfast sandwich. If you hate American cheese, it’s absolutely because you’re being European about it [sorry to the Europeans reading this post; it’s not personal, it’s just that many of your fellow continentmen simply have terrible tastes]. Like, OOOOoooo sorryyyy the cheese on your hamburger wasn’t aged in a barrel made from the queen’s ass for 3,021 years, and so sorry that it doesn’t taste like wine dirt feet and never melts on the sandwich! I simply want my hot sandwich cheese to be creamy, fatty, salty, and melty, and American cheese has absolutely optimized that formula. If I hear any gruff from a Frenchman on this, we won’t bail you out in the next world war, I can tell you that much.

Next, we move to the less controversial sausage of the sausage McGriddle. Now - as a typical idiot child would - I used to order my McGriddle with bacon, the logic being that bacon > sausage. What I failed to consider was that sausage is, at its core, a McDonalds specialty. A hamburger is largely just an unspiced sausage pounded flat, and McDonalds has positively nailed the hamburger [my mouth is watering at the thought, and I’ll give a shoutout in the next post to my first subscriber to Doordash me a Quarter Pounder with Cheese, no ketchup]. Bacon is a wonderful thing, but I’ll halt my praises of the McDonalds empire momentarily to say that, unfortunately, they have defied the odds and figured out how to fumble bacon. The bacon on McDonalds sandwiches isn’t bad… it’s just… listless. I look to bacon for a little crispiness, a little smokiness. McDonalds bacon is giving “I’m technically here.” The sausage, in contrast, is everything about the McDonalds hamburger you know and love, but with that extra sausagy breakfasty spice to make your morning McMagical. It is juicy and flavorful and just a genuinely tasty item. Though the sausage is not the grand finale of this tour, it certainly deserves the second-place spot.

Now, readers, it is my pleasure, nay, my duty, to explain to you why the McGriddle is the closest earthly experience we have to heaven. Dearest reader, it is the “Griddle” in the “McGriddle” that makes the world go round. You see, those gastronomical geniuses at McDonalds boldly went where no man had gone before. They were the first to cross the ocean of possibility, to climb the mountain of what a breakfast sandwich could be. Reader, hold on to something and prepare to have your shit rocked: The McGriddle is the McGriddle because they put the syrup in the bread. Let me say that again… they put the syrup in the bread! Those crazy McVisionaries saw the English muffins and the biscuits of the world, and they said: “No.” They said: “We can do better.” And dammit, they did. No longer do we have to suffer the dry, bland, crumbling breakfast bread. Instead, the bread surrounding a warm McGriddle interior is a pillowy cloud of pancake-esque delight. It is soft; it is sweet - but not too much! It is the essence of the McGriddle. The tasty little morsels of syrup are distributed randomly throughout, making each bite a mystery with no disappointing outcomes. The pocket system for the syrup prevents your breakfast from being too sweet while also offering up that familiar flapjack flair.

At this point, you and I may both logically ask: How did they put the little syrup clusters in the bread? We may never know. Some questions just aren’t meant to be answered, reader, and we must be content with the universe keeping her secrets. I may not know much, but I know enough to look into the face of a divine creature like the McGriddle and accept it without pretense.

Anatomical structure of a McGriddle.

McWrapping It Up

I know I just wrote this a moment ago, but how in the world are those blobs of syrup put in the bread! Gosh, a puzzle for the ages… I’d like to give every engineer on that project a firm handshake. They’re like the Manhattan Project, but for breakfast. The good folks at McDonalds’s mark on the world is undeniably larger, even if the amount of radiation emitted by all McGriddles ever sold is a fuckton definitely somewhat less than the radiation emitted via the atom bombs [I did the math].

“I am become breakfast, destroyer of hunger.” - Mick G. Riddle, 2003

I’m rambling. But, this post gave me the opportunity to purchase myself a delicious McGriddle, and for that it may be my favorite post yet. See a picture of me below enjoying my fresh McGriddle:

Me, excited to enjoy what turned out to be a perfect McGriddle. If I don't look excited, it's because I'm betraying the McGriddle's sole flaw: it is only available on the menu until 11am, so I had to wake up early (9am) to get this bad boi, and that naturally makes a person look like death. Dear McDonalds, bring back all day breakfast.

The final thing I’ll say on the marvelous McGriddle is that I have a challenge for you! Two challenges, actually. First, get yourself a McGriddle tomorrow morning. Go on! It’s Friday, and you’ve been so good… you deserve it (Remember: “a sausage McGriddle with cheese.” Don’t forget the cheese!). Let me know in the comments how delicious it was from a scale of 0 (Super Delicious) to 10 (So Delicious I Died And Came Back To Earth And Then Died Again From Pure Joy).

The second challenge I have for you is more self-serving. Sorry, but this blog isn’t gonna promote itself! My challenge is for you to share this blog with one person you can comfortably bully into subscribing think would enjoy it. If you are a current subscriber and you send me proof that you have garnered me a new subscriber, I will buy you a McGriddle the next time I see you. It’s a win-win, really… You get to milk my desire for attention to score a yummy breakfast, and I get attention [plus I will probably end up buying myself a McGriddle with yours… a win-win-win]. Hell, you can even order it with egg if you like. So, copy the link to this post, open your preferred communication method, and fire off that text to let the people know that, when it comes to The Stump, “Ba-da-ba-ba-ba, I’m lovin’ it.”