Here’s the thing about scrapple.
You don’t really want to know what’s in it.
It comes in little gray slabs that look like half-hardened cement. And then there’s that white, congealed fat on the outside. Not exactly a feast for the eyes.
And unless you’re on the Atkins diet, it’s probably not something you want to eat a lot of. (RAPA Scrapple in Bridgeville says its stuff is 88 percent fat free. I’m not sure if that makes me feel better or worse.)
Anyway, many of us have sort of a love-hate relationship with scrapple. It’s a wonder my husband still eats it at all. When he was a kid and his mom was away for a week, his dad took over the cooking. Unfortunately, his cooking skills were apparently limited to scrapple. So they ate scrapple sandwiches. Every day. Breakfast, lunch and dinner.
But in small doses, fried up just right, there’s nothing like it. The smell of scrapple frying in the morning -- that spicy, sausagey smell -- it reminds me of crisp, fall mornings.
I like my scrapple sliced really thin and very crispy on the outside. My husband favors his slices thicker. It’s a little tricky to cook both styles at the same time, but we cope.
First, make sure you have a good, sharp knife. It’s crucial for getting just the right thickness and keeping the slices intact. This is a trick I learned from my daughter’s first day care provider. We’d walk in in the morning and she’d be serving up slices so thin you could practically read the newspaper through them. It made me want to sit down with the kids and chow.
The first few times I cooked scrapple, I made a mess of it. How hard can it be to cook this stuff, right? I mean, it’s not exactly complicated. So why was my scrapple turning into piles of grayish muck?
Well, I read the directions (I know, I know) and discovered that the secret to keeping the slices from disintegrating into mush is a hot pan. If you get the pan good and hot before you throw you scrapple on, you’re almost there. There’s another secret: don’t try to flip it too soon. If you do, it’ll fall apart.
That part took me a while to figure out. After all, how long can it take to cook a slice of grease, miscellaneous pig parts and seasoning? Apparently about eight minutes per side. Again, reading the directions helps.
Now, there are some who swear scrapple isn’t worth eating unless it’s deep fried. At one local family restaurant, a waiter once held forth on the secret to really fine scrapple: "You put it right in a Fry Daddy and let it go," he said. Yikes. Am I the only one who thinks that’s just a tad redundant?
Here in Sussex County, we don’t realize what a regional thing scrapple is. We take it for granted that every local butcher has its own scrapple -- each one a little different from the next. When my mom visits my brother in Ohio, she always takes two things -- scrapple and TastyKakes.
So I guess it shouldn’t surprise me that Bridgeville’s Apple-Scrapple Festival, set for Oct. 10 and 11, is by far the most asked-about event here at Sussex County Online. Year-round, we get asked almost daily for dates and information regarding the annual scrapple fest.
Folks at town hall said this week they’ve been fielding Apple-Scrapple calls every five minutes.
Not surprising, considering that upwards of 35,000 cram into little ol’ Bridgeville every year for the celebration that includes crafts and amusement rides in addition to lots of apple dishes -- and more than a few scrapple sandwiches.
Maybe my husband’s ready to eat just one more.
