Maybe it’s all the food shows that partake in extreme culinary concoctions that make experimenting with strange food parings appealing. I mean, having to wait in line an hour for fried butter or a Krispy Kreme cheeseburger is rather strange, but it is all the rage! State fairs throughout the U.S. are trying to up each other in creating odd food parings.
However, I wouldn’t call it culinary couture happening at the fair. Most of it is fried—such as Twinkies, cookie dough, meatballs, candy bars, macaroni and cheese, and even jelly beans.
At the Wisconsin State Fair, which runs Aug. 4–14, fairgoers line up to taste deep-fried butter, a battered treat showing up on fair menus across America. But believe it or not, it wasn’t the Dairy State that came up with this saturated fat delicacy, but Texas.
A local Wisconsin restaurant, the Machine Shed, is frying it up for customers—fried butter and fried mashed potatoes as well. For $8.00, the Machine Shed is offering a sample platter of deep-fried butter, a Krispy Kreme cheeseburger, and a stick of chocolate-covered bacon.
Ironically, the letterhead of their press release reads: “Heart of America.”
The butter treat is described as “big, doughy, warm, butter-filled deep-fried goodness,” according to Patrice Harris, the fair’s communications manager as said in the press release.
Also unusual but a bit more interesting taste-wise is the Elvis, a deep-fried peanut butter cup in banana batter.
Another obsession at fairs is whatever you could eat with a fork can now be found on a stick. At the Wisconsin State Fair, there are over 60 different foods on sticks. Among the most obvious are caramel apples and corn dogs, but also served up on sticks are deep-fried oysters, stew, country-fried bacon with gravy, and tropical fruit tempura to name just a few.
