That’s actually how I started putting butter on them. I didn’t keep cream cheese in my fridge but always had butter
I was raised to put on my bagel first, then top it with cream cheese. The first time I saw someone put only cream cheese on a bagel I was astonished. But that was a long time ago. In the intervening years, I’ve seen/eaten just about everything.
I’m rather hungry right now. If I could magically have a perfect bagel with any topping I desired, I guess I’d go for a dab of butter and a generous slather of cream cheese.
Best bagel sandwich is a garlic bagel with butter, ham and cheese. Also a toasted raisin bagel with butter and jelly is better than with cream cheese and jelly. Especially with a lot of melted buttery butter. Yum.
I’m quite partial to a toasted, liberally buttered sesame bagel with lashings of honey. And extra sesame seeds if possible. If my butter is the unsalted kind (phtooey!) a pinch of salt too.
I used to butter and salt bagels to simulate hot buttered pretzels.
Put a half of a small thinly sliced onion and lots of butter-- more than you think necessary (there seems to be a theme) in a frying pan until onions are see through. Lightly scramble three eggs and stir it in the pan. Have a handful of flaked lox ready to toss in the eggs once you get a nice soft curd going. Put on bagel. Enjoy.
Butter is only for when you’re out of cream cheese cheese.
Putting butter on a bagel is like putting cream cheese on an English muffin. It just tastes wrong.
No, somehow I doubt that the next bagel I have with butter will be less disappointing than the last one I had with butter. Or any other one I’ve had since actually trying cream cheese. Butter is for when I put the bagel in the toaster before checking if there was any cream cheese, and there’s also no cheddar (second choice).
Lightly toasted, then cream cheese and thinly sliced onion, then lox.
Ideally, an everything bagel with cream cheese, lox, tomato, and capers. Most bagels are better with cream cheese, but some (like cinnamon raisin, which is barely a bagel) pair well with butter. But the bagels that I like (everything, salt, garlic, onion) go best with cream cheese.
Respectfully disagree. My own invention:
Seeded bagel, cream cheese, dill, dry smoked salmon, bacon, tomato, a grind of pepper and a thin slice of red onion.
I find butter works best for me on onion bagels. Plain, not so much.
Always butter.
I have a package of “bagel thins” in my desk drawer at work. I have one every morning, with butter.
I do like cream cheese on bagels, but that’s something I treat myself to on the weekends.
As far as I’m concerned, bagels are a butter delivery vehicle.
Garlic cream cheese…yummy but natures own birth control.
I endorse this entire statement.
Splitter!!
While my usual is a sesame bagel with veggie cream cheese or occasionally lox and creamcheese, a toasted garlic bagel with butter is a treat.
I always thought it was like toast with jelly. Butter first, then the other topping, which in a bagel’s case, is cream cheese.