The full McDonald’s breakfast menu, ranked

Nothing says “balanced breakfast” like sugar-drenched pancakes served alongside a piece of meat that wouldn’t cut it on a TV dinner. The Hotcakes are the decent pancake-ish cakes served on the other McD’s breakfast platters. But the steak? Let’s just say it’s more of a steak-ish experience. Maybe order if you’re trying to impress a date with your big spending. But also, why are you at McDonald’s in the morning for a date?

The fairly decent biscuit warmed up and served open-faced gets the Southern diner treatment here. It comes in a microwave-dinner-style plastic container that says, “I didn’t think this order through.” The gravy is decidedly on the corn syrup side of breakfast, less savory and more “What’s going on here?” It’s the culinary equivalent of a long hug from a distant relative—comforting until you start asking questions.

Breakfast burritos are inherently good, especially the ones that are as big as your bicep and packed with cheesy, eggy goodness. But at McDonald's, the menu item is a rare misstep due to its underwhelming size and taste. Unlike Chipotle's expert wrappers, this handheld is served flimsy and wide open on both ends, making it an impossibly messy order to devour in the car.

If we're going to McDonald's for breakfast, it's certainly not for the oatmeal. That's something we can make at home in the microwave when we're trying to be healthy. But as far as fast food oatmeal goes, McDonald's version isn't half bad: The whole-grain oats are rendered silky with a touch of cream, and a smattering of brown sugar, apples, cranberries and raisins makes it feel substantial.

Introduced to the masses in 2003, the McGriddle is one of McDonald's most polarizing menu items, but there's no denying that it works. Designed to seamlessly blend savory and sweet in one handheld morsel, the "buns" are actually syrup-infused griddle cakes. This version of the dish, which is stuffed with a single sausage patty, is a fine introductory option to dip your toes in the water. But to get the full experience, you're going to want to skip ahead to items 6 and 4.

On their own, McDonald's sausage patty and buttery biscuit are two critical building blocks for the rest of the breakfast menu. But when they're paired together without any assistance, they leave much to be desired, particularly in the texture department. Both the biscuit and the sausage can lean dry and crumbly, a lackluster combination that's practically begging for a slice of cheese and a swath of sauce.

A step up from its dry, sausage-filled counterpart (No. 13), this stacker proves the scientific claim that adding an egg to anything usually improves it. It also shows that cheese goes a long way to tame the dryness of the buttermilk biscuit. Toss in a few strips of bacon, and you're cooking with gas.

A sampler platter of greatest hits, the Big Breakfast includes a flaky biscuit, a stack of hotcakes and syrup, a coveted hashbrown, scrambled eggs and a sausage patty. Weighing in at 1,340 calories (sorry), this reliable behemoth will probably leave you full until dinner time.

Here, the McGriddle gets the breakfast sando treatment it deserves with a folded egg, a slice of American cheese and thick-cut bacon. Though the sweet, syrupy flavor in the griddle cakes is subtle, it plays nicely with the smoky meat—it's exactly why we love dragging our bacon through leftover syrup from an order of pancakes at brunch.

Mmm, smells like Americana for breakfast. There's no denying that the sausage McMuffin is a fan favorite that's built to showcase everything we crave in the morning: A crispy, craggly English muffin, melted American cheese, a peppery sausage patty and fluffy eggs. It just works.

Two syrupy griddle cakes bookending a piece of fried chicken—because who needs common sense when you have maple-flavored carbs? The chicken is fine, but the combination is a little like wearing a fur coat in July—unnecessary and a bit confusing. It's as if McDonald’s thought, “Let’s see how far we can push the limits of breakfast sanity.”

The biscuit is pretty good, and the chicken patty, while not winning any fast-food wars, is passable, making for a sandwich that will likely fall solidly in your “not bad” category. It could use a sauce, or, if we’re throwing reason out the window (and we are at McDonald’s to start our day, after all), ask for Hotcakes Syrup for dipping.

This one was a real surprise. Having sampled the McDonald’s version of steak beside an order of Hotcakes, it’s fair to assume this sandwich would fall into the never-again category. But somehow, here, the piped-in beef flavor of the steak product worked nicely with the eggs and biscuit, as did the addition of a pretty good heap of caramelized onions, all pairing pretty nicely with the biscuit. Who would’ve guessed it?

No, your eyes are not deceiving you: McDonald's does indeed have three McGriddles to choose from, but this version is tops. While bacon can slip and slide, the perfectly shaped, expertly seasoned sausage patty stays put while you chow down. Plus, the savory-sweet pork plays brilliantly with those hotcake buns. A folded egg and a layer of melty cheese seal the deal, making this an indulgent sando worth getting up early for.

If you grew up in the '80s or '90s, there's a good chance you have an emotional memory tied to McDonald's signature hotcakes, which were introduced to the core lineup way back in 1977. You can get 'em paired with a side of sausage, but what's the use? These fluffy, golden-brown pancakes are great on their own—just be sure your order includes a pad or two of butter and syrup for dunking before you exit the drive-thru.

As someone who’s sampled the finest of bagels in the New Yorks and Montreals of this world, I was pretty sure I’d hate the two things holding together the bacon, egg and cheese here. But to my surprise, the bagels were pretty good, definitely reminiscent of the ones Dad used to buy in slender bags from the grocery store. Paired with the McDonald’s standard salty bacon and fluffy-ish eggs, this is a solid early morning order.

An undisputed classic, the Egg McMuffin was invented in the 1970s as McDonald's answer to the eggs Benedict. It finds a puck-shaped egg cozied up with a round of Canadian bacon and American cheese inside a toasted English muffin. In many ways, it's the Old Faithful of the menu, the breakfast sandwich you can always count on to sop up any wrongdoing you did the night before. There's a reason it's been on the menu for decades: The flavors, textures and overall composition are spot on.

What's this? A side dish tops the list? Give us a chance to explain. Served solo or paired with a McMuffin, McDonald's hash browns are the cornerstone and the pinnacle of the entire menu. The unassuming oval-shaped patties are fried to crispy, crunchy perfection on the outside, but one bite reveals a delightfully fluffy potato core. Dip 'em in ketchup or toss them into any sandwich on this list for a seriously decadent upgrade. Whatever you do: Save yourself the heartache and order just two so that you don't have to make a second trip through the drive-thru.