Ina Garten's Bagel Hack Is Dividing the Internet

It’s not often people have issues with Ina Garten. The beloved cooking show host and cookbook author is a pleasure to watch when she’s cooking for her husband, Jeffrey, or her slew of guests. Her fans want to know everything about her cooking from how she gets her scrambled eggs fluffy to which of her recipes is Taylor Swift’s favorite. 

An older Ina Garten video recently resurfaced, and not everyone is embracing Ina’s way of “hacking” a bagel, although she doesn’t call it a hack. In the video, she is seen cutting a very thick bagel into thirds lengthwise, resulting in two bagel ends and one middle slice. 

Some people are appalled at the way she cuts the bagel, mostly because they don’t understand what she does with the cut bagel.

Hoda Kotb and Jenna Bush Hager Try Ina’s Bagel Hack 

On a recent episode of Today With Hoda and Jenna, the morning show hosts tried cutting a bagel like Ina. It did not go well. Hoda wielded the knife, and she butchered a soft bagel, trying to get through it while Jenna hid her eyes from the carnage.

“You get rid of that middle piece,” says Hoda once she’s done slicing. 

Except that’s not what Ina did. She did not get rid of it. It is not a way to make a bagel while keeping all the crusty outside. It’s also not just another way of achieving what scooping out the inside of a bagel does, as Jenna assumes, to get rid of some of the extra breadiness of the bagel. 

“I can’t with wasting any part of the bagel,” one commenter said, and several commenters talked about the waste. But in reality, Ina’s hack has no waste.

Why Ina Garten’s Bagel Hack Has Caused Confusion

It seems whoever set up the segment for Hoda and Jenna did not fully understand what Ina was doing. Neither do many others giving this method a try—not even Philadelphia Cream Cheese. On Instagram, the brand said, “The Barefoot Contessa casually dropped the ultimate bagel hack.” The video demonstrates slicing a bagel into thirds, adding cream cheese to one of the crusty ends and the middle piece, then placing them all back together. Their method gives you extra cream cheese, and that’s not a bad thing—but that’s also not what Ina did. 

Ina turned two bagels into three bagels. When she cut the two bagels into thirds, she ended up with 6 pieces. She used two of those pieces to create a “nice little sandwich” which she thinks tastes better than a sandwich made with a super thick bagel. 

She wastes no bagel, however, because she makes three cream cheese and smoked salmon sandwiches out of the two bagels. Her way creates a better sandwich filling to bread ratio. Ina’s way is a bit like creating a fresh version of store-bought bagel thins. If you’ve ever had the store-bought thins, they don’t always satisfy like a good, fresh bagel. But Ina’s version will.

Zwilling USA’s TikTok account also missed Ina’s point of cutting the bagel into thirds, saying Ina does it to make the bagel less doughy (she does not). They put all three slices into a toaster. They added cheese and sliced ham to one toasted slice, topped it with the toasted middle, topped that slice with a fried egg, and then put the top on, making a triple-decker breakfast sandwich. Not a bad creation, but again, it’s not what Ina did.

Of course, it's fine to cut a bagel into thirds and do whatever you want with it, but if you want to do what Ina does, you’ll need two bagels to make three sandwiches. You’ll also need a good-quality knife—we don’t blame Jenna for hiding her eyes. It did look like Hoda might cut her finger off when she sliced the bagel.