The Best Breakfast Meats, Ranked

Anyone who doesn’t love breakfast, claims to be too busy to eat it, or just grabs a Luna Bar on the way out the door should be banished to a remote island made of sausage. And no breakfast is complete without a large amount of delicious meat on your plate. Oh, those sweet, sweet breakfast meats! Unless you are Val Kilmer, though, you can’t have them all every time, so this helpful guide will help you narrow down your choices to make the right, and very crucial call, from breakfast meats the world over.

Paya is a traditional Indian dish that basically translates to “feet” in Hindi and Urdu. That’s because it’s basically just a big cauldron of cow, goat, buffalo, and/or sheep hoofs. Mmm, nothin’ like a bowl of dirty animal feet! So, yeah, it’s last.

Popular in the UK, this a lamb’s kidney cooked in a spiced sauce. Okay!

As any Quebecer can tell you, creton is a spreadable pork paste that you smear on your toast the same way you’d apply butter. You know, just more of a pork-y type of butter. Hoser.

Everyone’s heard the word mutton, but many people have no idea what the heck it actually is. Basically, it’s just an older version of lamb, and it’s typically served as a breakfast dish in England. That whole country is like a retirement home for weird breakfast foods.

This is an obscure one, but holy hell is it delicious. Developed in Toronto, Canada, peameal bacon is a type of back bacon made from lean boneless pork loins. It’s then trimmed, wet cured, and rolled in cornmeal. The result is a coaster-sized puck of meaty excellence. It’s only at 13 because you’re gonna have trouble finding it.

Pancetta is like bacon’s little cousin. They like all the same shows and movies and music, but when they go to school on Monday, bacon is still the most popular kid and pancetta blends into the background and sits with Malcolm Debinsky, the kid with the really long nose hairs, at lunch.

Stamp and go is a Jamaican dish whose weird names comes from 18th century British sailors who were constantly in a rush to get their order. It’s basically the original fast food. A fish fritter made with salt fish, it’s usually served alongside ackee and callaloo fritters. You have no idea what either of those are. It basically looks like some weird Chicken McNuggets, only made with fish.

Scrapple is a popular board game that involves the ties with letters of various point values and... wait a second that’s not right. ACTUALLY, Scrapple is a mush of pork scraps and trimmings, mixed together with cornmeal, wheat flour, buckwheat flour, and spices to form an awkward-as-hell loaf. Originated and popularized in rural America, Scrapple is a huge hit amongst the Mennonites and Amish communities around Delaware, Maryland, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and West Virginia. The condensed, semi-solid brick may sound a bit gross in theory, and maybe it is. But damn if it’s not delicious.

Oy vey, what would a list of breakfast meats be without lox? If you’re Jewish, or if you know anyone who’s Jewish, then you know how delicious the incredibly odd pairing of lox and cream cheese on a bagel is. It’s like the PB&J of the Hebrews. Don’t even get me started, I'm so verklempt I could plotz!

It’s not pudding! It’s sausage made from pork blood and oatmeal. It’s not pudding. There are different varieties, but it usually either looks like a hockey puck or a spring roll. It’s not pudding.

There’s no single dish that personifies “It’s 4am and you’re getting breakfast on the way home at a dirty old diner/are in Downtown Vegas” than steak and eggs. Hopefully this ranking makes it more acceptable in normal circumstances.

Before everyone lights their torches and forms and angry mob, it has to be said: turkey bacon is good! It’s definitely not regular bacon, but it gets constantly hated on for no reason. Turkey bacon, and chicken bacon for that matter, are both fine and deserve your respect. They’re like your step dad. Obviously you’d prefer your real dad, but Bruce is a nice man and YOU WILL LISTEN TO HIM!

Let’s clear up a common misconception: back bacon is a traditional British cut of sliced, unsmoked bacon. It includes pork loin from the back and a bit of pork belly in the same cut. It can be wet or dry cured, and it’s totally different from the American-style smoked side bacon, which is made only from the belly. In Australia, back bacon is known as “middle bacon.” “Canadian bacon” is a term used in the US for a form of fully cooked back bacon, usually smoked. This term isn’t used in Canada, though. It’s sort of the same as when Europeans call it American football, but in America it’s just football. And soccer is something too.

Not to be confused with back bacon, middle bacon, or Canadian bacon, ham comes from the upper part of the hind leg of the pig. The pork is then preserved via salting, smoking, or wet curing. Ham can come in slices, cubes, or in a whole big chunk. Now you know what ham is.

What happens when you take a hamburger and turn it into a smaller, lighter version made of pork rather than beef? You get one of the best breakfast items around. Also they fit really well on McMuffins.

Ohhh, sausage links. They’re like if a hot dog worked out for three months, lost 60lbs, bought a whole new wardrobe, and cleaned up real proper.

Let’s face it: nothing was going to beat out bacon. Anything else would have been fun and controversial and probably made for some great debates, but this is a reputable overconsumption website. All praise be to bacon.

Tyler Lemco is a writer and rapper from Montreal, Canada. He enjoys burgers, music, cheeseburgers, sports, and bacon cheeseburgers. Follow him on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, Soundcloud, YouTube, Neopets.com, and any other social media @tlemco.