A Stick on a Stick (County Fair Edition)
August 14, 2011 Leave a comment
I guess you know when you’re from the Northwest when you have a visceral reaction to the latest from the deep-fried set in the flyover states. Pickles (not bad), Twinkies (interesting), Snickers (a bit of a waste of a fine candy).
Based on that, you might ask: “What are they deep-frying this year?”.
Butter.
You heard it right .. it is served drizzled in cinnamon and / or honey, and is making the rounds at the county fair circuits. Eater.com posts “A Deep-Fried Stick of Butter (On a Stick) at the Iowa State Fair” .. which sounds mildly redundant: deep-fried stick on a stick? Please.
Surprisingly, this is actually nothing new: the delicacy debuted at the State Fair of Texas back in 2009 (link to NPR). Not to miss out on the 2009 craze, the mainstream MSNBC posted “Move over, Twinkies, Deep-Fried Butter is here”.
For the calorie crowd .. a stick of butter has 810 calories. 1/3 of a cup of pancake batter is about 150 calories. Add in the oil used to fry it, and I’m guessing it’s conservatively a 1,000-calorie treat.