[Question] I'm short on time every week. What's the fastest/easiest way to meal prep a cracked egg for "mcmuffin" sandwiches for the week?

Something like this would probably make it a snap to fry up a bunch of uniform size eggs for breakfast sandwiches

https://a.co/d/8JxvBIz

Get some good English muffins (Bays are in the refrigerator section and sooooo much better than Thomas's). Are you doing bacon? If so line a baking sheet with foil and fold the edges so that the bacon grease doesn't run under the foil. Lay you bacon out on it and pop into a cold oven. Bake at 375 for 20 to 30 minutes depending on how accurate your oven is. Doing sausage? Fry your parties up in a frying pan. Cook your eggs. If you want them to be perfectly round then use English muffin rings or grab a can of tuna and cut the top off with a hacksaw, oscillating tool, can opener, angle grinder. Make sure to debur the edge with emery coth. Make sure your pan is absolutely flat and not warped. You might want to lightly toast the English muffins. For the cheese use American cheese food product slices. Take one slice and fold the corners toward the center. And break along the fold lines. The smaller center square is for one sandwich. The corners will be exactly the same amount of cheese. That is for sandwich number two.

Line a baking baking with parchment or freezer paper. Assemble the sandwichs and place them on the baking sheet. Place in freezer for two hours. Toss them in a freezer bag. Place in freezer.

Microwave for 90 seconds when you are ready to serve.

I routinely pre-make breakfast sandwiches for the week and have pretty much perfected what I like at this point.

English muffins a great for reheating, sourdough I find reheats the best. I typically toast them slightly as well to maintain some crunch

What you came for: Eggs. I switch up between fried eggs and scrambled. I like my fried eggs a little undercooked, so they can be messier to eat, but scrambled eggs require a good bit of cheese to hold them together. Fried is pretty self explanatory since it's still one piece and you just stick it on there. For scrambled I'll mix in some cheese while I cook them, then when I put it on the sandwich it gets a slice or 2 of cheese on top to melt and hold it in place. I've tried using cookie cutters or muffin pans to get egg rounds, but getting a size that also matches your sandwich usually requires buying a special sized thing that's used only for that purpose, which I try to avoid. Plus I've found that having the eggs in a disc shape just seems to not hold up as well over the week compared to scrambled or fried. The texture tends more to rubbery for me for some reason.

Bacon or ham is good as well

Instead of getting sausage patties already shaped, I'll opt for the tubes of raw sausage. like with the eggs, pre-shaped patties are always too small and you don't get full coverage, and you definitely want every bit to have a little of everything. So I get the tubes and stick them in the freezer while I cook most everything else, then when it's close to frozen- but not completely solid, just more firm- take it out and with a serrated knife cut into thick rounds. You'll want them thick because you'll need to press them to expand the diameter. They're gonna lose a lot of that size when the fat cooks out so make them bigger than your sandwich when you press them out. Then you can just pan-sear the patties and finish off in the oven if they're not cooked through yet.

I'll then put the sandwiches together. Depending on how well the scrambled eggs are holding together, I pay stick the bottom half of the sandwiches in the oven for a couple minutes just to melt the cheese slice on the eggs and keep them where they're supposed to be.

Once done and they're all put together, make sure they've cooled off completely and wrap each one in foil (definitely spray some non-stick spray on the foil to make it easier to remove after re-heating). Then in the morning you just toss a foil-wrapped sandwich in the over (I use an air-fryer typically but conventional ovens work as well, but will need a lower temp and take longer. But you can have that warming up while you do everything else to get ready for the day).

It takes some time to set it all up, but I usually set aside a whole day on weekends to do my grocery shopping, cooking and prep for the week. And these sandwiches seem to keep pretty well for me. I've been able to make enough for as far out as 10 days and don't notice an appreciable decline in quality.

I'm gonna +1 the Silicon muffin tray tech.

Silicone "soft" muffin tray, rub oil on each hole, Crack an egg in cook for ~20 min, let cool, pop em out.

We prep an entire week of eggs in like 30 minutes this way.

Combo it with the "round" coin style sausage you can get and english muffins.

I also like to buy the packs of Costco chocolate muffins and freeze em in baggies of 4. They thaw perfectly fine overnight and will last plenty.

Can buy like 24 of em and freeze em for a long time to stretch em out.

It wouldn't be exactly the same, but you could consider making some soft boiled eggs, then shelling then and smooshing them on the McMuffin when you want to eat it. That way the egg stays in the shell and would have a longer shelf life, and you get that yummy, slightly runny yolk on the sandwich.

Note: you can reheat them by putting them in a glass of hot tap water for a few minutes.

I do two methods depending on items at hand. ( I didn't click the links below so if I'm repeating a method please forgive me!)

1. You can crack an egg into a coffee mug, mix up, cover in a wet paper towel and microwave for 1min/70sec. It might make a pop sound but that's all fine. Comes out pretty sandwich appropriate.

Easy to make morning of or make at work or whatever.

2. I use a silicon muffin tray. Spray/apply oil to cups and crack one egg into each for however many you want. If you don't mix the eggs together, just pierce the yolk with a fork. I sprinkle black pepper on the top of mine. No need for cup liners.

I've mixed in bacon bits, basil leaves and really whatever else. 350°F / 177°C for 15-20 mins, adjusted to your preferences.

I imagine those would freeze up very well. Now, I'm going to go make a breakfast sandwich for dinner! Good luck!

Not an egg mcmuffin at all, but for meal prepped breakfasts, I usually make a bunch of steamed buns or dumplings and have them with soup and rice, all 3 quick and easy to heat up in the morning and can be prepped ahead of time.

Though I admit it might not be as quick as an egg sandwich to eat. These days I've been having muesli and cottage cheese. Again, maybe slower to eat, but the prep time is about as long as it takes to take a half cup scoop of two things 😁

There's a bunch of meal prep stuff if you search. This one looks good to me... You can freeze them

https://www.tasteofhome.com/article/meal-prep-breakfast-sandwiches/