Hungry on a Saturday morning at home? Long load times during WFH early in the day? This breakfast sandwich is an experience. It also takes practice, so don’t beat yourself up over something going wrong. It’s forgiving and can weather a few mistakes.

Take your English muffin—store bought is fine—and toast it lightly. We’re not done with it yet, so too much isn’t good, but it does need to warm through. Be sure you split it the right way: with a fork and some careful peeling, NOT a knife. This relies on a craggy surface.

While that’s going, start your griddle and grate some potatoes and add them and a little oil onto the flat top. (Alternatively, use the store bought stuff here, too. This is a breakfast sandwich, so who has time for that in the morning.) season that lightly with salt and maybe garlic powder or parsley or something and let keep it going on medium for a while.

Next, slice a little red onion into thin ribbons and halve some cherry tomatoes. Lightly seasoned these, let them macerate (ma-SIR-ate—-or is that only with sugar?) a minute to release some juices and throw them on the flat top right when you should flip your hash browns. Your English muffin should be ready now too. Snag some butter or a little excess oil from one of the other ingredients and drop each half on the griddle.

Take a silver-dollar-sized ball of breakfast sausage and drop that on the griddle too. Take a wide spatula and press down hard and slide off to make the edges nice and lacy.

That should have been juuust enough time for the English muffins to get a little crisp on their crags, so pull them to a warm plate and we’ll start topping. They get some kind of creamy tangy sauce on the bottom muffin. I do Chick-fil-a sauce, but you could do a special sauce of any kind. Don’t do too much zing here and the tomatoes will carry the rest later.

Your hashbrowns should be just on the edge of too crispy, so you can pull that too, on top of the sauce.

Flip the sausage patty and,—once that’s crisped up, but not cooked through— drop the heat. Crack an egg onto the skillet and use a spatula to work that into an ungodly yolk/white mixture. Its fine. You won’t notice. Let it cook for a moment while you move the sausage on top of the hash browns. It should be the right size, crispy on the outside, and just cooked on the inside.

Flip the egg and top with a slice of cheese. I use a mild Colby Jack that melts well and gets out of the way more than American or something sharper. Let it melt as is or dash some water next to it and cover. The sandwich is forgiving.

We’re almost done and it’s all coming together. The tomatoes from earlier—no, I haven’t forgotten them—get spread on the top muffin. Spread because by now, they should be a jam of delicious, tangy, sweet, slightly charred onion and tomato. This is the secret. Do nothing else and put this on any bread with cheese and you’re still winning. But, do everything else and spread this concoction onto the top muffin and you will thank me.

Add the egg on top of the sausage, cheese up. Crown the sandwhich and…. Wait another minute. Wrapping this will help leakage, sure, but u/@hrimfaxi_work knows what they’re talking about. Wrapping in parchment paper or even foil lets everything come together. Unwrap after a short while and groan and satisfaction at every bite.