Aldi’s Breakfast Best vs Jimmy Dean’s Breakfast Sandwiches: We Tried It

It feels weirdly disrespectful to pit something against Jimmy Dean. Maybe you’re too young, but I’ll admit I’m old enough to remember commercials (the kind you couldn’t eventually skip) where Jimmy Dean’s soft Southern drawl spoke breakfast poetry while sausage patties gently spat out little ribbons of grease from a cast iron skillet.

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But as much respect for Jimmy Dean as years of television watching have built into me, I also just love a good sausage, egg and cheese on a biscuit. Like a lot of you, I grew up on the classic McDonald’s Egg McMuffin. And considering McD’s tends to shut down breakfast as soon as the rooster waddles home, anytime I see a version of that sausage-egg-and-cheese in the frozen aisle, I’m happy to snatch them up, defrost, and prepare―and compare.

And it turns out, there’s a healthy (some could say heated) rivalry between two brands of this classic breakfast sandwich: Jimmy Dean’s Biscuit, Sausage, Egg & Cheese and Aldi’s Breakfast Best brand Sausage, Egg & Cheese Biscuit Sandwiches. So, of course, I decided to compare them and (maybe) declare a winner. (Spoiler alert: all three of us lost.) 

Aldi’s Breakfast Best Sausage, Egg & Cheese Biscuit Sandwiches

Pros: We already know Aldi goes hard for the breakfast options, and both sandwiches look great on the box. I will say, even frozen, even in its plastic wrapping, the Aldi’s sandwich just looked happier. The frozen biscuit looked fluffier. More importantly, it cooked up nice and fluffy, better than Jimmy Dean’s (but also just decent on its own―crumbly, buttery without tasting oily, and still cloud light with that strange biscuit magic). That said…

Cons: This sandwich gets a lot of love online, but to be fair, that love tends to come with health advisories (not even kidding: “Used to eat these all the time until I actually looked at the nutritional facts and realized they were slowly killing me.”) Turns out that whole 49% daily value sodium does impact the overall impression of a sandwich. But even tasted one-by-one, except the biscuit, the components were sub-par: the sausage patty, thinner than JD’s, was grayish brown even after cooking, also far too chewy and somehow underseasoned (not just salinity, I mean classic herby spicy sausage flavors). As for the egg, yes, we’re dining in the world of pre-cooked, frozen, reheated egg discs, so being persnickety about texture would be… insane. That said, the Breakfast Best egg is spongey and bland and might make a good Memory Foam dupe. 

FINAL VERDICT

On sight alone I honestly thought I’d be ranking this higher. The biscuit’s better, the gray sausage is seasonless (and seems really into remaining a unified disc―like, you gotta chew), and a full bite is so salty, it kinda feels like you just took a swig of soy sauce. Not a great on-the-go breakfast, especially if your morning doesn’t involve passing out immediately after eating. 

Jimmy Dean’s Classic Biscuit, Sausage, Egg & Cheese

Pros: It makes sense, since Jimmy Dean’s is a sausage company, but yeah, the Jimmy Dean sausage is just so much better. Like the Aldi’s brand, it still has that glued-together vibe (whereas homemade sausage patties or the kind you’ll get at a good biscuit restaurant, give a bit of a juicy spicy crumble when you bite in). But where Aldi’s sausage remained a flat, if heated, grayish disc of pork, the Jimmy Dean’s patty was thicker, and fragrantly spiced. 

Cons: Actually the other components (except, again, the American cheese, which showed up and did its job in both cases, no complaints) were all cons. The Jimmy Dean egg is light, but similarly texturally strange―leathery, tight, less watery than Aldi’s but still too spongey and reminiscent of insulating foam materials. The bigger con in the JD sandwich was the biscuit―thinner than the Aldi’s biscuit, though better seasoned, but you can tell the biscuit dough’s been overworked, resulting in a gummier, chewier biscuit. 

FINAL VERDICT

I’d almost give it 6 (for saving me 12% more of my daily value of sodium and also for being a quick breakfast option), and to be honest the sausage spicing alone tempts me to knock it up. But it’s a calorie and fat-bomb without the joy you should get for all that investment. The patty really is the best part, but you don’t need to imprison a Jimmy Dean sausage patty in a ton of extraneous calories and strange Memory Foam egg textures to call it breakfast.