Ok, so in the Battletech thread, folks started talking about scrapple. Brian and I did, really, spawing out of being from the Philly region. I feel like folks need to fully grasp what scrapple is, but rather than futher gunk up that thread, I decided to put it here.
So here’s what scrapple is… farmer dudes (originally Amish, I believe) in the region would render all kinds of mean scraps from pigs and stuff in big pots, for various uses. After doing so, there was still fat and little scraps of meat and stuff left in the pots.
Some Amish dude realized that he could dump a bunch of corn meal into the pot, mix it all up with some spices, and the corn meal would absorb everything in the pot, and become meaty and good.
And thus scrapple was born. The stuff comes out of the pot, and is formed into blocks, or loaves.
In this form, scrapple is not appealing looking. It’s a kind of greyish-brown block.
What you do to correctly prepare scrapple, is you slice it real thin (Maybe between 1/8 and 1/4 inch thick), and then fry it in a frying pan. Since it’s basically corn meal and fats, it browns awesomely. The goal here is to get it real brown and crispy on the outside. The inside then becomes kind of soft and mushy.
Scrapple gets a bad rap by folks who don’t really understand what it is… they think it’s like head cheese or something else, where it’s a bunch of organ meats or something. But it’s not. It’s meat flavored corn meal.
You know what it’s similar to? Fried pollenta. It basically IS fried pollenta, only with spices and bacon flavor.
Do you not like the idea of bacon flavored pollenta? Then you sir, are what is wrong with the world.