There’s nothing quite like a hearty breakfast to start the day off right, and there’s something special about the way steak and eggs wake you up in the morning. Well, steak isn’t particularly cheap, but the eggs are! So between the two, you can enjoy a great meal with plenty of fat and protein for about a buck and fifty cents. That will hardly buy you a cup of coffee at a retail eatery!

Here’s two tricks to making pan-fried steak and eggs into an easy meal:

Butter, butter, butter the pan

Without a bit of real butter on the pan, those eggs get sticky. If they’re even slightly overcooked, cleanup can become a huge pain! So make sure to thoroughly grease the pan with some butter or olive oil before cracking the egg and cooking it up.

Get some thin cut steaks

There’s two advantages to the thin cut steak. First, you have cheaper and smaller portions: you can eat the “whole piece” and still only consume 2 to 3 ounces. With a $4/lb steak, that’s just about $1 worth of meat for a very decent breakfast.

The other distinct advantage of using thin cut steaks when frying steak and eggs is that they cook as quickly as the eggs do. There’s nothing worse than having the perfectly cooked egg and seeing a bloody piece of meat that needs more time or a higher heat!

For the last few weeks, I’ve been enjoying this meal for breakfast almost exclusively. Once in a while I’ve switched in some fried pork and vegetables, but the egg and meat combo is still one of the best ways to start a day!