It’s time for the Food Power Poll again, this time chronicling the best in breakfast meats. It is the most important meal of the day, but at the same time, not just any meat can go with it. Usually, the pig is most associated with breakfast, and as you’ll see in the following entries, my opinions back up the common logic here. Check check check it out.

10. Fried Chicken

Three words - chicken and waffles. You’re welcome.

9. Steak

Steak and eggs is that old-school important rich guy businessman breakfast that you’d imagine Don Draper would get after a night of making ads, drinking bourbon and banging busty, sexually repressed secretaries. I’ve actually had it before on a few occasions, and it’s solid, although yeah, steak is usually a LOT better at dinner time than breakfast.

8.Canadian Bacon

It’s relatively good for you, which is weird because breakfast pork is rarely ever associated with good health. That being said, the Great White North’s equivalent to what we call bacon is pretty damn tasty. I had a bad experience with it when I was a kid, ordering “Canadian bacon” at a diner when I thought it was just a Canadian variant of what I loved, so I was turned off to it for awhile. But as I grew more and more fond of ham, I started to appreciate this more. It’s a godsend for when I want a good breakfast but when I want to watch my caloric intake.

7. Sausage (Smoked)

When Dunkin Donuts introduced their Smokehouse Sandwich, I got really excited until I realized they were using their gross-ass omelet patties on it instead of the actual cut-rate fried eggs (Which are actually kinda good) that they use on the Big  ’n Toasty. I feel like kielbasa, bratwurst and other smoked sausages are criminally underepresented in the breakfast arena. CRIMINALLY.

6. Hamburger

This is my upset pick, actually. It all has to do with the craze of putting fried eggs on cheeseburgers. Have you had one yet? If not, and if you like cheeseburgers and eggs, try it. It’s a revelation. Well, I actually did it with leftover homemade burgers the next morning, and it was sublime. 

5. Dried Beef

It’s astonishing that this has made it so far up the list for being a one-trick pony, but you guys need to know how much I fucking love cream chipped beef. Like, when it’s well done? It’s probably one of the best things to eat for breakfast, especially over hash browns or a waffle? Awesome. The best I’ve had it, actually, was over a homemade donut. If I felt guilty about eating things such as this, it would have been a guilty pleasure, but I really have no shame. I’m sure dried beef would be good in an omelet or whatever, but yeah, 99.9% of it is consumed in CCB, and it should be.

4. Pork Roll 

This is very much a Philly/South Jersey thing. What is it exactly? Well, I’m not sure I can pinpoint it. Like the other Philly-area favorite, scrapple, it has kind of a mystery meat feel to it. However, it’s got great tang, and when it crisps up ever so slightly, it gets a wonderfully chewy texture that goes great on a breakfast sandwich.

3. Sausage (Italian)

I grew up eating sausage with eggs, but not the maple kind like everyone else. It’s all about the Italian sausage. It helps that I lived with my full blooded Italian grandfather for the first 7 years of my life. Anyway, there’s something about a mixture of egg yolk and spicy sausage grease running down your chin while eating a sandwich on a long roll. 

2. Country Ham

Confession time. I’d never had country ham until the middle of last year at a Cracker Barrel on the way to a 7 day cruise to the Bahamas. My life changed when I ate it. If it was this good at a chain place where the quality gets watered down the further north you get, then how would it be made by a real Southern home cook? Fuck, I want to eat Paula Deen’s country ham. You know that shit’s good. This is a dangerous, dangerous contender to bacon.

1. Bacon

Not surprising at all, but rather than feed into the bacon-as-meme hysteria that even I like to perpetrate around the Internet, I want to make a reasoned rebuttal to some backlash against this cured pork belly delicacy that has started to bubble up through the ground like oil through Clampett family lands after being pierced with buckshot. Jon Bois, a man who otherwise writes things at SB Nation that I not only agree with but often find as good as gospel, wrote a guest piece for On Sandwiches (a fine blog, as it were), stating that the bacon craze has gone too far, going so far as to denigrate the ingredient as secondary citizen on a “mustard sandwich”. Obviously, there was a bit of tongue-in-cheek at play here, as if he hated bacon, it wouldn’t have made his sandwich at all. That’s not the point.

Unsurprisingly, any time something reaches a fever pitch, people take it overboard and in turn, it creates a predictable backlash. Obviously, bacon isn’t the be all, end all of breakfast meats to others as it is to me. That’s fine. That being said, let’s not get crazy up in here, alright? Bacon became a meme for a reason - it’s perhaps the one meat that combines taste with versatility better than anything else. It’s a jack of all trades. It’s great on its own or as a complement, as finger food or on a sandwich. It’s not like it was propped up by a bunch of hipsters and then taken as gospel through the magic of the Internet. I’d say a consensus of gentile carnivores around the country would find bacon to be pleasing to their palates.

It’s not the notion that bacon isn’t king that bothers me. It’s the tone of Bois’ guest piece that bothers me a bit. Like, okay, the oversell is annoying, but why blame it on the meat? Its only crime is being fucking tasty. Blame it on the people who spoil it with their hype.

Again, I’m really not trying to put Jon on blast, because again, he’s one of my favorite writers on the Internet. I just want to provide a little sanity for the pro bacon camp and show that we’re not all maniacal douchebags. Also, I wanted to give On Sandwiches and Jon a shoutout, although fuck, I’m sure they don’t need it from me. I have what, 10 readers right now here? I just hope it’s the thought that counts.