Two Saltine Recipes or Cheese Is Divisible By Four

While I have written about this topic before I have never done it with the bologna connection. No, sorry, this is not about how to make your own saltines at home although I know many of you who are talented enough to do that. I watched this educational video over at Jeptha Berengar’s channel about how to eat bologna and saltines. For this post, I added the comments I left on his channel below, pretty much verbatim. I plan to embellish them a bit so if you want to see the original comment you should go watch it on youtube and come back.

What a bunch of bologna. Bologna is a sausage and the red “skin” is actually the casing of the sausage and with sausage, the whole point is to waste as little of anything as possible.

First, when eating saltines you should always turn the saltines over so the salty side is facing outwards or in other words, the salt part should touch your tongue first. Putting the saltine in your mouth with the salty side out makes for a better dining experience overall.

I have another recipe that is similar, but not quite the same, really. For this recipe, you will need three slices of cheese and some real butter as well as the saltines. I take the saltines in multiples of four (sliced cheese is always divisible by four) and butter the unsalted sides, spreading the butter evenly across the whole cracker. Remember that there are two sides to a saltine cracker, the salty side, and the non-salty side.

Just to make sure you are aware, you should always use butter and never, ever use margarine, which, I have been told by more than one source, is only one molecule away from being plastic. Always insist on real dairy butter and real dairy products like real cheese from real cows or goats. Or sheep. But sheep cheese is not cheap. While using the saltine box as Jephthah so adroitly expounds, is good for when you are roughing it, I prefer to use the more refined option of a paper plate. You may use a “real” ceramic plate if nothing else is available, however. Arrange your four or eight or twelve (twelve makes a beautiful geometric pattern but four make a perfect square and eight make a perfect rectangle. Sixteen creates a danger of sliding off the plate and should only be practiced by an experienced cracker handler.) salty side down, butter side up, on a plate.

Cut the cheese, dividing it into four equal parts and center each piece of cheese over each cracker. Don’t eat any until you have them all arranged geometrically on the plate. To eat, simply pick up a saltine by the edge and place it in your mouth, salty side down, cheese and butter side up and enjoy. Always remember to keep the salty side out towards your tongue because the salt extracts flavor and enlightens taste buds. This recipe does not call for a top cracker but if you have very strongly flavored cheese you may use one.

Now if you are one of those daring “foodie” types you could combine both recipes! For me, the sausage I would use would be summer sausage or salami but then you need to have a strong cheese.