This Hardee's Breakfast Sandwich Features A Meat That's Rarely Used In Fast Food — Probably For Good Reason

From freshness and flavor to portions and presentation, there are many reasons a dish might fail to hit the spot. The Smoked Sausage, Egg, and Cheese Biscuit at Hardee's suffers from something rarer: a bad decision. While the sausage links on this breakfast sandwich are delicious, it's worth noting that they're rarely used in fast food. Fast food chains almost universally prefer sausage patties for their breakfast sandwiches — and there's a good reason. 

Link sausages are springy and cylindrical, which makes them difficult to eat in a sandwich. That's why the breakfast sandwich was last in Tasting Table's ranking of 15 Hardy's breakfast sandwiches. "I was pretty excited to eat the smoked sausage breakfast biscuit, mostly because it's a rarity to get link-style sausage at a fast food restaurant," our expert wrote, adding that they "wanted to see if it was possible to still use this kind of sausage for a proper breakfast sandwich without making a mess." 

Long story short, it wasn't. "Eating this was a disaster, with the soft biscuit crumbling to smithereens while the leathery sausage hardly responded to the gnashing of my teeth," wrote our taste tester. Not only that, the Hillshire Farm smoked sausage — a take on kielbasa — was much too salty. Even so, Hardee's Smoked Sausage, Egg, and Cheese Biscuit has its fans.

Serving link sausages in a breakfast biscuit might not have been the best move for structural integrity, but some customers appreciate the Smoked Sausage, Egg, and Cheese Biscuit from Hardee's anyway. "I chose their Smoked Sausage & Egg & Cheese Biscuit and it was amazing! ... It was very appetizing and tasted great!" one happy customer posted on TripAdvisor. A reviewer on YouTube said they liked the fact that this sandwich didn't have the regular sausage patties that everyone does. 

"I like it when a company mixes it up a little bit. Everyone's doing the breakfast sausage? We're going to do an actual sausage, split in half," said the YouTuber. Incidentally, splitting a sausage down the middle is one of several ways to cut sausage links to transform any dish. But even they admitted that it was a little too salty. "It's smoky, salty ... maybe a little too salty for me today. Not something where I won't eat the rest of this and enjoy my breakfast."

While the breakfast sandwich receives mixed reviews, the Hardee's breakfast menu remains as popular as ever. "Hardee's breakfast is vastly underrated," wrote one Reddit user. "If Hardee's would serve breakfast all day, they'd be the richest company in the world," said another. "Of all the places that serve biscuits and gravy for breakfast (fast food) theirs is the best," added a third Redditor. While the Smoked Sausage, Egg, and Cheese Biscuit may be a mess, other items are worth trying.