The outside.
I last ate saltines (with canned soup) as a child. I see no reason to eat either now. I suppose if I live long enough to go into a nursing home, I’ll have them again, though probably not buttered!
Can I assume that butter cookies and shortbread are right out for you? Nasty, solid, unmelted butter (well, resolidified, anyway). And those croissants: mon dieu, the horror! Never had a buttered baguette and a coffee at a Paris bistro?
I’m getting the impression that you people are secret margarine eaters and Crisco lickers.
I may never understand why anyone would willingly eat a saltine at all.
Butter as an ingredient in a cooked item is not remotely the same thing. I also don’t put flour or raw eggs on saltines but I’m ok with them as ingredients in a cookie.
Of course I have (well not the coffee since I don’t drink coffee, but bread, bistro, butter, check. Which I how I know that eating unmelted butter is gross and weird. But still, the argument for it on good bread is stronger as at least with that there are flavors combining.
With a Saltine, you’re just eating butter.
You say that like it’s a bad thing.
To me it is, but if it isn’t to you then why waste time on the saltine? Just grab a stick and a spoon. Then we can have a poll on “when eating a stick of butter what end do you start with the left or the right? Or do you eat it like a corn cob?”
But to answer the poll question, if I were buttering saltines i’d put it on the top side because:
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That is where the texture is which will better hold the butter and since I’m just eating butter presumably that’s what I’m after.
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I’ll be holding the cracker by the side that I’m not buttering so essentially just scraping off the salt onto my hand while buttering the cracker. Since presumably that is the only thing that the cracker is adding to this meal, it should probably remain on the cracker. Unless part of the joy of eating a stick of butter is to then follow it up by licking salt off the palm of your hand like this is some kind of Wisconsin Tequila Shot.
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Since it is a law of physics that when dropping something with a top and a bottom it will land on its top and it is a law of physics that when dropping something with butter on it that it will land butter side down it would cause a wormhole and destroy the earth if you buttered the bottom of Saltine and then dropped it. I’m not willing to take that risk with everybody’s lives.
My tongue never seems to think fast enough to have such expectations. i don’t think it deserves an optimal taste dispersal ritual. i say let the butter spread where it may.
I’ve had some double cream grass fed butter that tempted me to do just that. And don’t get me started on ghee, which is like crack. But I like the crunch of the cracker. Sort of like buttered popcorn. I wonder if heating the cracker first would soothe the outrage here? Seems a pretty intransigent lot, though. I think we buttered-cracker Americans should apply for some sort of class designation.
I didn’t vote. I don’t put anything on Saltines.
I spent a weekend at a very old-school hunting club in Alabama. The dining room served Saltines baked in butter plus more butter for spreading before meals. They were addictive. These sound similar:
And you call yourself a scientist.
:smack:
There are some things humanity was not meant to know, er, do.
Buttered saltines?
What
the
f
u
c
k
?
Is this some sort of British thing? They’re the only ones I can see doing something like that.
No. I’m solidly American Midwestern. My mom’s from Indiana. She would give me lightly buttered saltines when I was a kid, with my tomato soup if I wasn’t hungry enough for a sandwich, too.
Don’t knock it til you try it. I’m with Chefguy, I don’t see how it’s any weirder than buttered bread.
now that’s just weird.
dry crackers go with soup.
butter is lube and flavor for otherwise.
How is it different from using crusty buttered Italian bread to sop up spaghetti sauce? Or is that weird, too? Mom was just giving me something less than a sandwich to do something with my hands besides slurp from a spoon. I imagine she got it from her mom. I don’t do it often, but I still butter a few saltines now and then. They’re good that way, and not so dry. Just very lightly spread with softened butter.
I agree with my esteemed colleagues ChefGuy and SeaDragonTattoo.
Buttered saltines are a delicious snack and I partake regularly. And I assure you, I am completely normal.
In fact, there are very few foods that aren’t improved with the addition of salt and butter.
Glad I could help end the controversy. 
Peanut butter in between two saltines, salt side out, and a glass of milk is a perfectly cromulent snack. Also if you are out of bread, grape jelly on saltines – salt and sweet, yum.