Top 10 New Foods at the 2011 State Fairs

It’s America’s favorite meal — the state fair! Every year, the fairs across this great land compete with each other to invent bigger, badder, greasier fair food. But after Texas stepped up its game last year with deep fried beer, this thing hit a whole ‘nother level. The 2011 state and country fair foods have been more insane — and more amazing — than ever. Here are our top 10 favorite finds.

10. Chocolate Covered Corn Dog – Orange County Fair

Could there be anything more American than dipping a hot dog in batter, deep frying it and eating it off a stick? Why yes, there could be. You could cover it in chocolate and put sprinkles on top, a treat that was found at both the OC Fair and neighboring San Diego County Fair. My Burning Kitchen has more on food at the San Diego fair. (Photo: www.myburningkitchen.com)

9. Deep Fried Kool-Aid – San Diego County Fair

In another strong showing for California’s other great fair — and originator of last year’s hash brown covered hot dog, San Diego debuts what is surely the trashiest food ever conceptualized. It’s just unclear why they didn’t wrap it in bacon. (Photo: Cuttlefish)

8. Deep Fried Butter on a Stick – Iowa State Fair

Texas may have invented deep fried butter at their own fair a few years back, but Iowa thought to put it on a stick. See, America, we can do great things when we work together. Yes, this involves frying an entire stick of butter, and yes, you simply have to watch the video for full effect.

7. Buffalo Chicken in a Flapjack – Texas State Fair

The first of several entries from the Lone Star state, this monstrosity is a chicken strip, coated in pancake batter and jalapeño bread crumbs, then deep fried and…you guessed it — eaten on a stick. (Photo: State Fair of Texas)

6. Red Velvet Funnel Cake – Florida State Fair

Funnel cake has fallen behind on the list of outrageous fair foods recently. After fried beer and fried Coke, plain old fried dough starts to look pale by comparison. But this year we saw funnel cake get a new southern fried twist that injects some new life into it…and probably injects all kinds of chemicals too. Why eat fried dough when you can eat red fried dough? (Photo: Bob B. Brown)

 Next: The Top 5 state fair foods

 

Chocolate Peanut Butter Banana Rice Krispie Squares

Time to celebrate back-to-school season with some kid-friendly, no-bake goodness. But since we couldn’t keep our busy hands alone with the just the classic Rice Krispie treats, we threw a few extra add-ins for a scaled-up version.

Don’t worry  — we didn’t get too complicated. What we did do was add was some peanut butter and chocolate, plus some bananas to cut through the richness, and because three is never a crowd when it comes to those flavors.

So yeah, sit back, have a few bites, and go ahead — wipe your mouth on your sleeve.

Chocolate Peanut Butter Banana Rice Krispie Squares

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Nutella Pastry Pockets

Somewhere between the coffee and the Bloody Mary this Easter brunch, these powdered pastry heroics will showcase the baker in you. Nothing fancy, nothing exotic, just Nutella and some sliced bananas between the light airy layers of a puff pastry.

Incredibly easy to make, they will have you in and out of the kitchen in about 20 minutes or less. That is, if you use store-bought puff pastry. If you want to get elbow deep and pull a Ms. Martha Stewart, than have it and make the puff pastry from scratch—just add about 1 ½ hours to that 15-20 minute session and nix the easy in it.

Either way you bake it up, these are delicious, and psst…these can be made the night before and leave you more time to get your game on for the annual Easter egg hunt.

Nutella Pastry Pockets

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Feed Us Back: Comments of the Week

Patty H. is lovingly concerned for those peeps in a jar:

Love it! Made me smile, but then, just as I clicked to leave the site, I thought “Oh no, I bet they can’t breath.” So, just wondering about maybe some holes in the lid.

We’ll make sure they’re safe. PS — an ES sneak preview — next week we’ll be featuring different ways to cook with peeps. Have any ideas? Send us your links.

– Hope everyone has made good use of our 100 ways to cook with sriracha post. Michael Birchenall of Foodservice Monthly checks in with a 101st recipe:

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Four Things to Freeze Before Vacation

I just got back from Chicago for a quick birthday vacation. Besides packing plenty of warm clothing and deciding on restaurants: iNG, The Bristol, The Publican, C-House, XOCO and Bari I also prepared my kitchen for a few days’ absence. But one more Chicago plug — Twisted Spoke, plenty of interesting, local and international beer, plus…inescapable ’70s porn. Enjoy a mustache with your Goose Island.

Anyway, here are some ideas on how to quickly prep your kitchen for a more welcome return.

Four Things to Freeze Before Vacation

1. Freeze Bread

There’s usually some sort of bread around my house looking for a quick toasting and buttering, or a nan looking for a dip in lentils. Either way, I rarely ever finish a package before its time is up. Before you see mold – and before you go away – toss the bread into the freezer. If you don’t have time for anything else on this list, this is the least you can do to save your food for future use.

2. Freeze Fruit

In this time before spring’s strawberries and summer’s, well, everything else, I’ve been leaning on the banana (especially in my double almond oatmeal).  I used to throw the whole banana in the freezer, peel and all. But soon the skin would blacken and turn slimy, and make the whole thing a mess. Now I peel the banana, slice it and throw it in a freezer bag. So far the banana hasn’t turned too dark. I added the frozen banana right into a new batch of cooking oatmeal, letting the banana warm up and soften into the oats. A frozen banana is also fab blended straight from the freezer with some Greek yogurt and topped with raw oats.

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Attack of the Meme: The 15 Best Food Charts

According to well, me, and this article, tumblr is the new twitter. And I can’t get enough of I Love Charts for their hysterical, progressive and, of course, food-focused content. Here’s the best 15 food charts from the past few weeks. Yes, weeks, they post that much.

15. Dirt Gets Such a Bad Rap

(Photo: Fake Science)

14. Top Left, Please

(Photo: Bad Postcards)

13. Truth

(Photo: Extremely Moderate)

12. Everything is Better in Japanese

(Photo: Interior Design Room)

11. #5

(Photo: Sound of Science)

10. Where’s Coddled?

(Photo: Flowing Data)

9. Apparently “The Jitters” is a Technical Term

(Photo: Unclear)

8. Chanukah Wish List

(Photo: Zouch)

7. What Is a Cheeseburger, Alex?

(Photo: Zouch)

6. Team Sriracha

(Photo: The Sriracha Cookbook Blog)

Next: The top 5

Feed Us Back: Comments of the Week

– We thought Sweet Fiend had made the ultimate All-American recipe when she dreamed up chocolate and beer filled donuts, but reader Jim takes it to an even higher level:

I making these today with this beer.
http://www.boulevard.com/BoulevardBeers/chocolate-ale/
It’s a chocolate Ale from Kansas City. If you can find it I highly recommend it.

Ahhh. Chocolate and chocolate beer filled donuts. Bravo.

TheGourmetCoffeeGuy isn’t running out to buy a bananza brand automatic banana peeler:

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