If you’re like me, pretzels aren’t just a food, they’re a snacking way of life. I decided that if I couldn’t break my addiction to the snack, I at least needed to branch out and stop eating them straight from the bag. This salty snack has awesome potential as a versatile ingredient, and it’s time to give it a shot.

Here are 5 ways to get those pretzels out of the bag and onto the plate.

1. Spruce Up Your Salad

pretzels

Photo by Elizabeth Layman

Pretzels are a healthier way to add crunch to a salad. Any kind of pretzels (specifically flat pretzel thins) are a really creative way to snap yourself out of the leafy sadness that is salad.

2. Make Your Baked Goods Salty-Sweet

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Photo courtesy of sallysbakingaddiction.com

As a tasty pop in cookies or brownies.

3. Next Level Chicken Fingers

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Gif courtesy of giphy.com

As a breading on baked chicken. It might not be mom’s Shake ‘n Bake, and it sure isn’t the Colonel’s fried chicken, but this recipe has all of the crispy deliciousness with a fraction of the guilt.

4. Three Words: Pretzel Pie Crust

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Photo courtesy of prettyplainjanes.com

Let’s be serious: chocolate, peanut butter, and pretzels are the most compelling love triangle since JFK, Marilyn, and Jackie. With a love that beautiful and complicated, anything’s possible. Especially in an unbelievable pie (bonus recipe for pretzel shortbread cookies).

5. Pretzels + Mozzarella Sticks = Heaven

Photo courtesy of glamour-4-you.com

As way to make healthier baked mozzarella sticks. Why is this not more common? Cheese sticks+crushed pretzels+oven=gooey amazingness unparalleled by anything else ever.

Of course, you can also always keep it simple and enjoy our trusty friend, the naked pretzel, in all of its’ salty crunchy goodness straight out of the bag.

More pretzel goodness right this way: