McDonald's launched a new Spicy McMuffin menu. It's good, but the best breakfast item is still a classic.

• McDonald's launched a new Spicy McMuffin menu to celebrate the breakfast staple's 50th anniversary.
• Spicy McMuffins — priced the same as their classic counterparts — add 50 calories of pepper sauce.
• While the spicy twist is tasty, McDonald's hash browns still reign supreme on its morning menu.

McDonald's has always been the exception to my rule about making healthy choices for my first meal of the day. On days I'm awake and ready to eat before their breakfast hours end, I will never say no to a McMuffin.

So when the golden-arched giant on Tuesday launched its new Spicy McMuffin menu — featuring a dollop of spicy pepper sauce on its classic Egg McMuffin, Sausage McMuffin, and Sausage McMuffin with Egg — I knew I wanted to try one, whether my editors greenlit this story or not.

The limited-time spicy offerings celebrate the 50th anniversary of McDonald's original breakfast sandwich, made up of melty cheese, an egg (or not), and your choice of ham or sausage on a toasted English muffin. Like most offerings from the global burger giant, the new spicy McMuffin menu items are not gourmet, but they hit the spot.

A slightly spicy twist on a classic

My McMuffin adventure began before my shift did. After agreeing to taste-test the new menu items for you, dear reader, I was faced with a classic McDonald's breakfast dilemma: I had to reach the restaurant before breakfast hours ended — between 10:30 a.m. and 11 a.m., depending on the location.

Looking at the McDonald's app, I was surprised to see that the Spicy McMuffin options read as "unavailable" at my local store. Thankfully, when I arrived in person, I was able to order the limited-time items at one of the kiosks in the lobby, and upon checking the app again, they reappeared as available.

Perhaps a glitch related to the new release, I faced no other complications with ordering.

After I ordered via touchscreen, a friendly McDonald's employee brought both the Spicy Egg McMuffin and the Spicy Sausage McMuffin with Egg to my table, along with an iced coffee and an order of hash browns.

The Spicy McMuffin menu items are priced the same as their classic counterparts, and they add 50 calories of pepper sauce per serving. I paid a total of $18.60 for the meal.

The sandwiches look very much the same as the classics — in fact, I split mine open searching for pepper sauce because at first I wasn't convinced there was any — but the sauce adds a nice, almost smoky flavor to complement the already tasty treat.

As a Southern California resident whose homemade salsas feature at least three serranos and four jalapeños per batch, I don't know that I would describe the sauce as particularly spicy in the traditional sense, but it was certainly an enhancement to the original version.

The exact recipe for the spicy pepper sauce is unclear, but its ingredients list posted on the McDonald's website indicates it contains habanero peppers, red bell peppers, paprika, and turmeric.

And market research shows that consumers are increasingly seeking out spicy foods. A 2024 report from Innova Market Insights found that there has been a 4% increase in global launches of chili-flavored packaged foods and beverages over the last five years, with consumers most likely to seek spicy flavors in sauces and seasonings, savory snacks, ready meals, meal kits, and soups.

McDonald's spicy menu items would appear to capitalize on the trend.

A popular, limited-edition treat

I'd ordered decidedly too much food for one sitting, so I ended up finishing both the Canadian bacon and the sausage McMuffin for lunch. I threw away my half-empty coffee — I'm not the only Business Insider reporter who has found McDonald's coffee watery.

I did, however, finish the hash browns in-store.

Looking around the dining room as I departed, I saw at least one other person enjoying the spicy version of the breakfast sandwich. However, since a majority of this location's business appears to be done through its curbside service, I couldn't get a better visual assessment of the outgoing spicy-to-classic ratio.

The National Restaurant Association reported in April that nearly 75% of all restaurant traffic now happens off-premises in takeout, drive-thru, and delivery transactions.

A spokesperson for McDonald's declined to comment on how first-day sales have gone, how many restaurants participated in the promotion, or how long customers can expect to see the spicy pepper sauce as an option for their morning meals.

A McDonald's employee at the location I visited, who was not authorized to speak on the record, said the spicy McMuffin items had been extremely popular the morning of their launch.

While the employee couldn't specify how many had been sold by the time breakfast hours ended at 10:30 a.m., they said there had been "tons" of orders for them.

Ultimately, I left thinking I'd happily eat a spicy McMuffin again, though the old classic — the humble hash brown — remains the top dog on the McDonald's breakfast menu.