The Bite subscribers can now join the conversation — click the speech bubble icon to leave a comment or click the heart to like this post. Last week, I shared three chilled noodles recipes. This week, I want to sing the praises of the not-so-simple cracker. Let’s dive in!

My preferred way to eat chicken noodle soup as a child was with so many Saltines crushed into the bowl that it ceased to resemble soup altogether. It became something closer to porridge, or gruel, which delighted me. On fall Sundays after church   — after being gently held to account for my sins via felt puppet shows, tiny plastic cups of Welch’s and the Lord’s own cracker, the communion wafer — my mom would have a pot of chicken noodle soup waiting to warm on the stove. I’d change into play clothes, take my bowl and begin the solemn work of crushing an obscene number of crackers into the carrot-flecked broth until the spoon could nearly stand upright. In my imagination, I was, naturally, a Dickensian orphan enjoying my one hot meal.

Crackers were never nondescript to me. They were the quiet architecture of certain meals, the thing that made everything else feel complete. 

There were the buttery Club crackers at the Greek diner in the Chicago suburbs where my mom took me as a kid, a place with red pleather booths, a Mediterranean mural on the wall and, eventually, a public death spiral involving $76,000 in back rent before it was razed to build a gas station. In my memory, though, it remains gloriously intact. I would order an open-faced turkey sandwich; she would order a chef’s salad with Thousand Island dressing, which arrived with Club crackers I was permitted to swipe through the rich, tart pink lake at the edge of her plate.

There were other crackers, too: my first grainy Breton cracker, which felt almost impossibly sophisticated beneath its little smear of cream cheese and red pepper jelly at a baby shower; the oyster crackers that came bobbing beside cheddar-topped bowls of chili; the faintly sweet Lunchables cracker, so persuasive in the elementary school cafeteria, carrying its cold circle of ham and processed cheese with the seriousness of a canapé.

Looking back, it seems inevitable that I would eventually want to promote the cracker from supporting player to guest of honor. 

Crackers have spent enough time under cheese, beside soup, tucked politely next to salads and dips. And I am hardly the first person to suspect that, with a little butter and heat and attention, the humble cracker can become something worth gathering around.

Scattered through old Southern community and church cookbooks are recipes for spiced Saltines: butter-soaked, herb-flecked, oven-baked until they darken to a toastier shade of gold. One of the better moments in the rise of New Southern cooking was the way these crackers occasionally escaped the church basement and turned up as bar snacks beside Mason jar cocktails, or on appetizer menus next to pimento cheese, smoked trout dip and other things that knew exactly what to do with a sleeve of Saltines.

Now, as we find ourselves deep in the season of simple summer entertaining — and still, always, keeping budgets in mind — I want to give the form a little more appreciation. Because crackers, even very good ones, remain one of the cheapest building blocks of a party. They are shelf-stable, flexible, familiar and almost impossible to make feel fussy. With a little intervention, they can become spicy, buttery, cheesy, crisp-edged and completely worthy of being the first thing guests reach for.

Here are three of my favorite party cracker recipes: 

These are inspired by the butter-soaked spiced Saltines that have long floated around Southern church cookbooks, family recipe boxes and bar snack menus. They taste a little like ranch crackers, a little like garlic bread and a lot like the kind of thing people will keep returning to by the handful. The buttermilk powder gives them that signature tang, but you can also skip the individual seasonings and use a packet of ranch seasoning instead.

Ingredients

Instructions

Heat the oven to 300°F and line a baking sheet with parchment paper. 

Arrange the Saltines in a single layer on the prepared baking sheet, or place them in a large mixing bowl if you prefer to toss them first. In a small bowl, stir together the melted butter, oil, buttermilk powder, garlic powder, onion powder, dill, parsley, black pepper and red pepper until well combined. 

Drizzle the seasoned butter mixture over the crackers, using a pastry brush or clean hands to make sure each cracker gets a little attention. 

Bake for 12 to 16 minutes, until the crackers look glossy, smell deeply savory and have turned a slightly toastier shade of gold. Let cool on the baking sheet, then finish with a little flaky salt if desired. Serve warm or at room temperature.

Shortcut: Replace the buttermilk powder, garlic powder, onion powder, dill and parsley with 1 packet of ranch seasoning, then add black pepper and red pepper to taste.

Think of this as savory frico brittle: buttery Ritz crackers, broken into uneven pebbles and hunks, tossed with Parmesan, herbs and a little fat, then baked until the cheese melts into crisp, golden clusters. It’s excellent served in a bowl as a snack, but it’s also very good scattered over whipped ricotta, tomato soup, marinated beans, roasted vegetables or a big Caesar-ish salad. The hot honey is optional, but it nudges the whole thing into sweet-salty cocktail snack territory in a way I highly recommend.

Ingredients

Instructions

Heat the oven to 350°F and line a baking sheet with parchment paper. In a large bowl, combine the broken Ritz crackers, Parmesan, fennel seed, rosemary, garlic powder, onion powder, black pepper and red pepper flakes, if using. 

Drizzle with the melted butter and olive oil, then toss gently until the cracker pieces are coated but not pulverized. Spread the mixture onto the prepared baking sheet in a thin, even layer, letting some of the Parmesan fall into the gaps so it can melt into lacy edges. 

Drizzle lightly with hot honey, if using. 

Bake for 8 to 12 minutes, until the Parmesan is melted, bubbling and golden at the edges. Let cool completely on the baking sheet, then break into clusters and shards. Serve as a snack, or use anywhere you’d use croutons, breadcrumbs or a very persuasive little cheese crisp.

These are exactly what they sound like: tiny oyster crackers tossed with butter, olive oil, Pecorino and far more black pepper than feels reasonable. The cheese clings to the warm crackers, the pepper blooms in the fat and the whole thing eats like the bar snack version of cacio e pepe. Serve them by the bowlful with cold drinks, or scatter them over tomato soup, chili, Caesar salad or roasted vegetables.

Ingredients

Instructions

Heat the oven to 300°F and line a baking sheet with parchment paper. 

Place the oyster crackers in a large bowl. In a small bowl, stir together the melted butter, olive oil, Pecorino and black pepper. Pour the mixture over the oyster crackers and toss until evenly coated. Spread the crackers onto the prepared baking sheet in an even layer.

Bake for 10 to 14 minutes, stirring once halfway through, until the crackers are warm, fragrant and lightly toasted. While still warm, shower with a little more Pecorino and another grind or two of black pepper. Let cool slightly before serving.

Hey there! Are you a party cracker person? Any other budget-friendly nibbles we should know about? Let me know in the comments or by sending me a note at [email protected].

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After publishing my recipe for marinated summer beans, I heard from a frankly delightful number of “Bite” readers with the same request: More beans, please. And listen, I understand. Beans are cheap, filling, endlessly adaptable and, when treated with a little care, exactly the kind of low-effort, high-reward food summer cooking requires.

While I’m in the process of developing a few more bean recipes for our cool little club, I wanted to share some favorites already hanging out in the archives.

First, there’s Bibi Hutchings’ black bean salad, which is simple, colorful and packed with crunch: celery, peppers, green onions and diced cucumber. It also includes a small addition I’ve since started borrowing for many of my own black bean dishes: orange zest. It’s floral without turning fruity, bright without becoming sharp, and it makes the whole bowl feel especially suited to eating outside, preferably with something cold to drink nearby.

Then, writer Maggie Hennessy makes the very compelling case that kidney beans are deeply undervalued — and offers the recipe likely to convert any skeptics: a cumin-, Kashmiri chile powder- and turmeric-perfumed kidney bean and lentil dal from Superkhana International, the fun-loving Indian restaurant here in Chicago. It’s the kind of dish that reminds you beans don’t have to be merely practical. They can be fragrant, generous and completely craveable.

And for very hot nights, I remain loyal to my slightly absurd 11-layer dip, one layer of which is restaurant-bought refried beans. Of course, you can use canned beans from the supermarket, but I stand by the idea that sometimes your local restaurant really is your best sous chef.

This week’s issue is, it seems in part, about giving a second look to things that tend to be treated as background: the cracker beneath the cheese, the Saltine beside the soup bowl, the oyster cracker bobbing quietly next to chili. Small things, supporting things, things so familiar they can almost disappear.

So, it felt fitting that I found myself absorbed by “The Feather Thief” by Kirk Wallace Johnson, which begins with a heist so strange it almost sounds invented: In 2009, a young American flautist broke into the Natural History Museum at Tring and stole hundreds of rare bird skins, many of them prized for their feathers by obsessive Victorian-style salmon fly-tiers. From there, the book becomes a surprisingly propulsive exploration of beauty, obsession and the strange ways certain objects — feathers, crackers, the tiniest units of adornment or appetite — can be overlooked by most of us while becoming the center of someone else’s world.

I also revisited “Finding Edna Lewis,” the PBS documentary hosted by Deb Freeman, which traces the life and legacy of Edna Lewis from Freetown, Virginia, to New York City and beyond. It’s a generous, necessary portrait of a chef and writer whose influence on American cooking, especially seasonal Southern cooking, remains both enormous and somehow still under-acknowledged. 

For a week spent thinking about crackers, church cookbooks and the quiet architecture of food at the center of gatherings, it felt especially right to spend time with Lewis, whose work reminds us that ordinary ingredients are only ordinary until someone teaches us how to see them.

Until next week,
Ashlie Stevens, senior food editor

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