bagel chips

I was looking for something I could stuff in Idle Husband's lunch that didn't have a billion weird unpronounceable ingredients, was relatively healthy, and was something actually appetizing (as great as baby carrots are, come on, don't lie, they're not so hot).

On a friend's suggestion, I decided on making some bagel chips (here's her original recipe). I'll always make pita chips from my older pitas, but the concept of making chips out of bagels really didn't occur to me. Now I could have made my own bagels, I've made them before and they're not that hard, they're just time consuming. So for this application, I thought it would be really sad to go through all the work of making them only to turn them into chips directly after. So for this one application, I went in search for some cheap bagels at Superstore.

It must've been my lucky day because there were two large bags of them on the clearance cart last week. (In case you don't know, if you get to Superstore early enough, they've got a few carts set out near the bread aisle of day-old bread and pies and cakes and...well, anything, and yes, they're all perfectly fine and 50% off!) Each bag had roughly 15 assorted bagels in them for only $3! Initially I thought that 15 would be way too many, but then I decided to make a few different flavours and make them all up as soon as I got home so there wouldn't be any chance of spoilage.

I did this all in my toaster oven which may or may not have been a good thing. I probably would have got them all done a lot quicker had I used the oven because then I could have used more than one pan, but oh well. Live and learn. It turned out to be kinda handy because I could set my little dish of butter on top of the toaster oven (my secret warming plate) where it would keep warm and melt any additional butter I added. On my last round of bagels, I didn't want to melt any more butter, so I used some cooking spray which worked just as well and was an extra easy alternative to brushing butter on.

So all you have to do is slice the bagels thinly, brush with butter, and sprinkle on a topping. I cooked mine at 350 degrees for 4 minutes, rotated the pan, then 4 minutes more, rotate, then 2 minutes. That seemed to crisp them up evenly. For my toppings, I decided to go the savoury route just because I had already made those granola bars and whole wheat cookies, so I wanted something different. I used garlic powder for one batch, onion powder for another, and finally simple salt and pepper. The salt and pepper ones are the best ones, in my opinion.

terrible night picture!

These are really great with tzatziki, salsa, or (believe it or not) honey (I like that sweet/savoury flavour). We've been munching on them all weekend but luckily (since I made so many), we still have two generous bags full of them.

mmm crumbly feta...or is that mozzarella?

They really are the perfect little snack. Crispy and cracker-like without all the guilt that comes with the store-bought chips and crackers. And I love how I can make them up into either sweet or savoury flavours. I'll definitely be making these again.