"flagels" news and stories

Sometimes you've just got to be crafty. I'm having a bit of a packed freezer crisis right now, and have no room for the increasingly stale flagels and bagels I bought last week. I wanted sausage, but not a sandwich. Thus Bangers and Flagels was born.

Think panzanella of the bangers and mash variety. Feeling too lazy to mash potatoes, I left that off and simply fried up a sausage, then some onions and mushrooms. (While I toasted up flagel chunks in the toaster oven.) When the mushrooms and onions were cooked to my liking, I sprinkled in some flour, mixed everything well, then poured in about a half a bottle of beer and some flavoring (like mustard). As the impromptu gravy began to thicken, I tossed in the flagels and let it all sit for a few minutes.

The beer can be subbed with the wine, booze, or liquid of your choice -- just keep in mind that the flavor remains in this dish, so don't cook with something you're only looking to get rid of.

For the last few weeks, I've been meaning to write up a post about flagels, the tastiest thing I've had tried this year, but Serious Eats beat me to it. If you like bagels, you must try one.

A flagel is, quite simply, a smushed bagel. After the bagel is boiled, but before it goes into the oven, it gets flattened. This might sound silly, but it offers its own set of rewards. Since it's thinner, it's easier to eat as a sandwich. It also means more outside bits to nibble on and less fluffy insides -- much chewier. I find flagels a great thing to snack on, and I'm dying to make some grilled cheese on it, as well as test it out with usual baguette dishes like tapenade and bruschetta. The thinness just opens the bagel up to a bunch of added food opportunities.

And no, although a commenter on the original post said it was bialy, the two are a bit different. While a flagel is a bagel smushed half-way through it's cooking process, a bialy skips the boiling step and makes a middle impression rather than a distinct hole.