Nothing fuels our kids for a long, cold PNW winter day better than a farm-fresh breakfast sandwich. It’s basically what our kids eat every morning. It’s also a go-to for a late after-sports-practice dinner, and sometimes it appears in a lunchbox or two.

What’s in a breakfast sandwich? Basically, the stuff you love. It’s a pile of goodness seasoned with salt and pepper snuggled inside two pieces of to-order toast. You can make these vegan, egg-filled, or meaty. We love using roasted onions, fried kale, marinated veggies, and all kinds of seasonal variations on a tried-and-true sammy.

But today we want to show you the basics.

As the resident breakfast champion, Brian has the fried egg breakfast sandwich down to an art form. The basic sammy: Toast, eggs, butter. Dressing it up a bit: Toast, eggs, mayo. Taking it up a notch: Toast, eggs, mayo, cheese. The heavy-hitter: Toast, eggs, mayo, avocado (pictured here). If we have sausage or bacon sizzling on the stove, those get sliced up and stacked on, too.

In our family, the secret is in the sauce. We always use mayo. Sometimes we use a siracha-mayo or a habanero-mayo (we don’t overthink this in the morning–it’s a squeeze of hot sauce and a big douse of mayo on a slice of toast). Sometimes we pile everything with salsa and arugula. When the tomatoes are sweetening on the vine and the zucchinis are filling out faster than we can keep up with them, it’s extra virgin olive oil and sea salt flakes and extra fresh ground pepper and a drizzle of balsamic.

Right now, as we dive deep into the end of a confused winter (because it was sunny yesterday but snowing today), we’re all about fresh fried eggs with mayo and avocado. Some of us like cheese, some of us don’t. Some of us love cheese but cheese doesn’t love us, so we just add more butter. We always use a perfectly fried egg to order–hard yolked for our son; scramble-fried for our daughter; and soft-yolked for mom and dad.

Here’s how to make a perfect breakfast sandwich:

• 2 slices hearty bread, such as a sourdough or harvest wheat, toasted till it’s dark on the edges and crispy all over. (Our kids can’t eat gluten, so pictured here is the Canyon Bakehouse Heritage Gluten-Free Honey bread.)
• A heavy slathering of mayo on both slices.
• Two fried eggs, fried to order in browned butter.
• Cheddar optional.
• 1/4 – 1/2 of a perfectly ripe avocado.
• Sea salt flakes (I used smoked sea salt flakes here).
• Fresh ground black pepper.
• Red pepper flakes for the folks who love some extra heat.

Fry eggs to your liking in browned butter. To brown butter: add a good pat of butter to the base of the pan and heat it on med-low until the butter begins to bubble and turn a light brown, then add your eggs. I always break the yolks and cover before adding salt and pepper; if you prefer yours sunny side up, leave the yolks whole and cover, leaving heat on low. Wait until they’re nearly done before adding a good slice of cheddar or your favorite cheese. Cover and let cheese melt while you ready your other ingredients.

We use the most basic ingredients in our breakfast sandwiches in the middle of winter on a school day.  On any given morning, Brian and I are drinking tons of coffee, but the kids are just like, Oy vey, you want us to eat now at 7 am when I just rolled outta bed?! So we keep things simple on school mornings: Mayo, salt, pepper, and avocado.

This is how much mayo we put on our toast. I show you because let’s be honest it’s not a dab-will-do-you kind of situation. We layer on our mayo and say hi to it while we do so:

And then we add avocado, and it’s not just a lil’ bit. And we cover it with salt and pepper:

And finally, we fold those bad boy fried eggs in half with the melted cheddar in between and we say Oh thank goodness for another day of loving breakfast as much as we do with our hot coffee, Good morning to you!:

When we have the presence of mind to do it, we slice these in half. But we always serve them with a happy heart.

Happy weekday mornings to you!