Is the secret to making over-the-top meals as simple as breadcrumbs? My last breakfast at the wonderful AS Boutique Hotel in Ljublijana was a combo I’d been thinking about the whole time I was there. The menu offered asparagus with hollandaise and I asked if they could add a scrambled egg to it. Breakfast arrived with a discreet pile of toasted breadcrumbs tucked in next to the asparagus (which were wild — just to kick them up another notch). It took the whole dish from being really good to being one of the best things I ate there.
That made me start thinking about breadcrumbs and more specifically toasted breadcrumbs. A chicken dish I made recently called for topping the chicken with breadcrumbs before cooking. It came out with a wonderfully crunchy topping.
There’s a pasta recipe that made it on to the must-try list, partially because it calls for breadcrumbs—this time tossed with bits of salami and toasted. I’ll report back.
Even something as good as summer tomatoes get kicked up a notch–like this great recipe for a breadcrumb topping with olives and Parmesan.
And mac and cheese would be boring without some friendly breadcrumbs to make a crunchy topping. Mine has been known to sell houses.
So how do you get great breadcrumbs? First, you should make your own and it’s super simple. Take some stale, or sort of stale bread (I’m looking at you, yesterday’s baguette), crumble it into small pieces and toss them into the work bowl of a food processor or blender. Process until pretty small but not dust. I keep a bag in the freezer ready to go. We use baguettes a lot, but the bread in Ljubljana was from their seeded rye, which added an additional texture to it. In other words, it doesn’t matter what you’ve got kicking around, you can just add it to the stash.
What’s your favorite use for breadcrumbs?
