Not long after McDonald’s introduced their McGriddles breakfast sandwiches, I tried one - and have been hooked ever since. The McGriddle is a fast, convenient breakfast food that I can buy via the drive-thru window on my way to school every morning. And that food tastes so, so good. Mickey D’s basically stuffs your favorite breakfast foods - sausage or bacon, eggs, et cetera - between two pancakes and wraps up the resulting sandwich for you. Pure heaven.

Last week, I noticed that Jimmy Dean - that wonderful company best known for pork sausage - sells the same thing. I paid a little over five bucks for a box of six Griddle Cake Sandwiches. That’s a good value because I pay more than one dollar for every McGriddle that I buy at McDonald’s. This better price per sandwich was what prompted me to try the Jimmy Dean version in the first place. But after I brought them home and ate my first one, I found even more things to like about this food.

Preparing the sandwich is a simple matter of pulling one out of the box (they’re all individually wrapped, incidentally), taking off the plastic, and wrapping the food in a paper towel. Microwave the wrapped sandwich for seventy seconds, then let the food cool down for a minute or so. The sandwich is still warm after that minute, but not so hot that it burns my mouth.

One thing that I really like about the Jimmy Dean version is the fact that each sandwich is significantly larger than a McDonald’s McGriddle. I pay less per sandwich for a larger amount of food. The Jimmy Dean sandwich isn’t quite twice the size of the McGriddle, but it’s close.

Actually: the sandwiches are so large that I sometimes have trouble eating my entire portion. Sometimes my dog gets the last bite or two because I just can’t finish that part. She’s not complaining about that, though: if it’s possible, my four-legged buddy loves this breakfast more than I do!

Even though I’m warming up a nice, big piece of pork sausage - between two maple-syrup-doused pancakes, at that - there’s not too much grease for my liking. The paper towel absorbs most of what little grease there is, so I’m happy.

As for taste: outstanding. The maple-syrup pancakes are just sweet enough to blend well with the pork sausage. And even though I like well-cooked sausage, the piece in each sandwich tastes great to me. It’s fully cooked, and therefore safe, but it’s not quite as well done as my sausage is when I fry it myself.

These sandwiches are probably fatty. I’m sure that there’s too much sugar in each one, too. And if I had to wager, I would say that there are lots of calories in each one. But I’m not on a diet, so I don’t care. These sandwiches are almost as good as the pancakes and sausage on a stick - another Jimmy Dean product that I really, really love to eat.

Rating: 9