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The bagel is a 400 year-old Polish pastry that today enjoys a lot of popularity in the United States. Bagels nowadays offer a surprising amount of variety: you can eat your plain untoasted bagel with cream cheese, or your toasted blueberry bagel with butter. Bagel flavors run from sweet to savory, depending on your morning mood.
No one quite knows where the everything bagel came from, but suffice to say that it emerged in America sometime in the 1970s or possibly 1980s. The name is a bit of an exaggeration, since this isn’t a matter of slapping just anything on the bagel. Instead, an everything bagel refers to a bagel topped with a certain combination of seeds, like sesame and / or poppy seeds, onion flakes, garlic flakes, and salt. It’s a definitively savory bagel, made for someone who likes their bagel with a salty, garlicky, seed-powered flavor.
At some point, someone got the idea to take those various bits you put on an everything bagel and just sell them standalone. That way, you could turn anything into an everything. Now you could have everything eggs, or everything burgers, or everything toast. The possibilities were endless.
I’m not sure if I can point to who exactly came up with everything seasoning any more than I know who came up with everything bagels. But if there is anyone who might lay a claim to at least making it popular, it’s probably Trader Joe’s. This seasoning is so popular at TJ’s that it’s been named an Annual Customer Choice Awards runner up. Trader Joe’s is a cousin to Aldi, by the way.
Trader Joe’s Everything But the Bagel Seasoning can be found on the store’s shelves all year long in the spice aisle. It comes in a 2.3-ounce glass container and costs, at the time of this post, $1.99, or about 87 cents an ounce. That’s about the same current price as the Aldi version and the Walmart version.
The ingredients list is simple: sesame seeds, sea salt flakes, dried minced garlic, dried minced onion, black sesame seeds, and poppy seeds. Sesame is listed as a potential allergen.
Ingredients. (Click to enlarge.)
The nutritional content is just about nonexistent save for some sodium.
Nutrition information. (Click to enlarge.)
We really like this seasoning. The various flavors have a depth to them that can enhance whatever they’re sprinkled on. We like putting the seasoning on eggs, but you can also put it on meats or whatever else you think it might be worth trying. One of our favorites is an everything chicken dish that features seasoned baked chicken breasts topped with a cream cheese-and-everything-seasoned sauce. No matter what you serve this seasoning with, a little seems to go a long way, so the bottle should last for a while.
The Verdict:
Trader Joe’s Everything But the Bagel Sesame Seasoning Blend is a great addition to any spice rack. It’s a versatile seasoning that can be used on a variety of items. The seeds, salt, garlic, and onions make a complex flavor that can enhance certain foods. And the price is competitive compared to other everything bagel seasoning options out there.
Similar at Aldi.
The one thing that stops me from purchasing this product (and others like it) is that it contains more salt than all but one other ingredient!
The supplier needs to significantly reduce the salt content (sea salt is still salt!). I believe this product can survive without salt altogether.