Bagel with Butter and Salami

Each Thursday, Emily Vikre (a.k.a fiveandspice) will be sharing a new way to love breakfast -- because breakfast isn't just the most important meal of the day. It's also the most awesome.

Today: Normal people of the world -- try this.

If you have never tried it before, let me introduce you to one of life’s great pleasures: the bagel with butter and salami. It’s the simplest things that are the best, right? A bagel with butter and salami takes three basic components and layers them one upon the next into a whole that is so much more than the sum of its parts. It hits many of the same notes as a classic French jambon beurre (ham and butter sandwich), combining chewy bread with salty butter and lacy, fatty slices of cured meat. I don’t fully understand why it is so good, but it is.

Bagels with butter and salami were a staple in my family. Versions of salami -- sliced paper thin -- are a pretty popular topping for bread or crispbread in Norway, and my family is particularly committed to our salami (and other sausage) eating because, I kid you not, my dad’s family owns the largest sausage factory in Northern Norway. Anyway, after my mother discovered bagels in the US, I guess she just kind of assumed that they should be topped with butter and salami, like a crispbread, and thus was born one of the all-time favorite breakfasts and snacks of my brothers and me.

We don’t eat bagels with cream cheese in my family, we eat them with salami. My husband, however, tells me that “normal people don’t eat bagels that way.” But, normal people of the world, if you don’t ever eat bagels this way, I really think you’re missing out. Give your cream cheese the day off and give it a try!

Bagels with Butter and Salami 

Serves 1 to 2

1 bagel, whatever savory flavor you prefer (I like plain or sesame)
Good salted butter
A few very thin slices of salami

See the full recipe (and save and print it) here. 

Photos by Emily Vikre