There’s steak and eggs but IME, that’s not exactly common. How did pork and poultry (via eggs) come to dominate American breakfasts?
I know that there’s corned beef hash, but at least in my part of the country (which happens to be beef country), it’s rare to see it on a menu.
Chicken-fried steak would like a word.
I love chicken fried steak but it’s not nearly as common as sausage, bacon, or ham.
Pork is significantly cheaper
Because beef is what’s for dinner.
I suppose beef sausages are a thing. I like steak and eggs, and the occasional fast food breakfast sandwich features steak. But you are right, it is rare. But so is breakfast chicken, in most places. But not eggs.
My guess would be that beef is, historically, prestige food, and the prestige meal is dinner.
I guess it depends on your situation. When I was growing up, we raised our own beef. Dad hunted, so we had venison too. It was a special meal for us if we had pork, because we had to drive to town (100 mile round trip) to buy it.
At least steak and eggs is a thing.
It’s even odder to me that I can’t think of a single common chicken item for breakfast. (With the exception of eggs, of course, but if you’re going to broaden your definition that much then you have to consider any dairy product to be related to beef.)
Maybe it’s less that beef is uncommon, but more that pork is the dominant protein for breakfast. Ham, sausage, bacon…
I Love bacon. If I wanted to make my stove greasy, I would have it…i actually have a bit of iced coffee and cake for breakfast.
I assume it’s because bacon or pork sausage was very inexpensive a hundred years ago? Beef was more costly and served at the main meal.
I’ve heard pork chops used to be a breakfast favorite. The thin ones fried in a skillet. We always saved them for dinner.
All that pork led to shocking discoverys. Killed soldiers from WWII already showed partially blocked arteries at 18-25 years old.
I still see them sold as “Breakfast Chops.”
I like the breakfast chops better than the thicker pork chops. The thin ones fry up better and taste better.
I always thought ham was fairly low fat. Until my gall bladder surgery. Geez, a ham sandwich tears me up. The gall bladder is needed to digest fat.
And unless I am eating cereal and prunes- that is my first choice. If I go out for breakfast- that is what I am gonna order.
Well, except at that one place in Santa Maria that had gourmet bacon made to order for them. Then we called it “going out for bacon”- bacon and eggs, bacon and pancakes, bacon and gravy or biscuits, etc etc- you get my drift.
I dont know how common it is in mainstream Amurikkah, but if we have meat at breakfast it’s almost always chicken sausage, turkey bacon, or corned beef hash.
Chicken and waffles is getting to be fairly common.
These are almost exclusively the meats on breakfast menus around these here parts. Occasionally hamburger patties or chicken-fried steaks, and rarely chicken. The locally-sourced pork sausage in this area is so good that there’s no reason to offer anything else.
That’s it, I believe. As a kid, all the breakfast meats were pork, and beef, in particular steaks, were something special reserved for particularly notable meals. So steak & eggs was for example, something I first read about being fed to astronauts before launch. Or as something people got on special occasion breakfasts. We certainly never had it at home. And steaks were something that we had on occasion, but only for dinner.
So I’m guessing that the genesis of those attitudes was probably something from a century or two before that, when pork was considerably cheaper than beef, and every farmer might have had some pigs and chickens.
True, but I don’t think I’ve ever had that for breakfast.