Teh One Who Knocks
07-25-2012, 10:54 AM
Written by Jennifer Miller - The Des Moines Register
http://i.imgur.com/8hMQr.jpg
There’s a rumor going around that the Iowa State Fair has vegetables. And music and hot tubs and any number of edifying activities like spin art and seed-spitting.
All that could well be true, but when all your senses are immediately assailed by Eau de Fair, and you’ve already got your Rolaids unwrapped, you can be forgiven for missing the spelling bee at the one-room schoolhouse.
What to eat first is the real question for the ages (or at least 11 days in August, from the 9th to 19th). That deep-fried butter thing is sooo last year. But take heart (and heart medication): The Campbell’s Concessions’ Double Bacon Corn Dog will make its debut this year.
It’s a pretty straightforward recipe: Wrap a hot dog in bacon, deep-fry it, dip it in “bacon-bit-enriched” batter and give it another hot grease bath. The technique is a little more complicated, though, and Eric Campbell, fry master extraordinaire, said these dogs are labor intensive and the method is proprietary.
“Keeping (the bacon) on the hot dog took a lot of experimenting,” he said. So don’t even try to bribe the sweaty teenagers working the stand for the secret.
Campbell says the DBCD is the first new menu item added by Campbell’s Concessions since they introduced foot-long corn dogs about 10 years ago. “We’ve been at the fair about 100 years and we try to keep it pretty basic. But I thought, ‘We need to do something fun with these corn dogs,’” he said.
And that, boys and girls, is how grease-based greatness is born.
Campbell is in Canada at the moment, peddling these Iowa-bred beauties to the good people of Edmonton at Alberta’s Capital EX fair. “They’ve been selling very well,” he said. “We’ve sold 500 to 600 a day just at one stand.”
And why wouldn’t they? You’ve got all the major fair food groups — batter, pork, fried and stick — all in one neat little hand-held bundle.
So, take that Texas, with your deep-fried Kool-Aid and Coke and chicken-fried bacon. Step off Ohio — we’re not (too) jealous of your deep-fried bacon cheddar mashed potatoes on a stick. And California, you can keep your Maggot Melt (deep-fried maggots on a bun with cheese … what the …?) and raccoon meat on a stick. Minnesota, we’re even betting this baby’s got one up on your corn dog pizza.
“The Iowa State Fair will be their U.S. debut, and we’ll only be selling them at one stand — the one up the hill by the AE stage,” Campbell warned. “We’re trying to get people up the hill. It gets kind of slow up there. And if it’s good for us, it’ll be good for the fair.”
http://i.imgur.com/8hMQr.jpg
There’s a rumor going around that the Iowa State Fair has vegetables. And music and hot tubs and any number of edifying activities like spin art and seed-spitting.
All that could well be true, but when all your senses are immediately assailed by Eau de Fair, and you’ve already got your Rolaids unwrapped, you can be forgiven for missing the spelling bee at the one-room schoolhouse.
What to eat first is the real question for the ages (or at least 11 days in August, from the 9th to 19th). That deep-fried butter thing is sooo last year. But take heart (and heart medication): The Campbell’s Concessions’ Double Bacon Corn Dog will make its debut this year.
It’s a pretty straightforward recipe: Wrap a hot dog in bacon, deep-fry it, dip it in “bacon-bit-enriched” batter and give it another hot grease bath. The technique is a little more complicated, though, and Eric Campbell, fry master extraordinaire, said these dogs are labor intensive and the method is proprietary.
“Keeping (the bacon) on the hot dog took a lot of experimenting,” he said. So don’t even try to bribe the sweaty teenagers working the stand for the secret.
Campbell says the DBCD is the first new menu item added by Campbell’s Concessions since they introduced foot-long corn dogs about 10 years ago. “We’ve been at the fair about 100 years and we try to keep it pretty basic. But I thought, ‘We need to do something fun with these corn dogs,’” he said.
And that, boys and girls, is how grease-based greatness is born.
Campbell is in Canada at the moment, peddling these Iowa-bred beauties to the good people of Edmonton at Alberta’s Capital EX fair. “They’ve been selling very well,” he said. “We’ve sold 500 to 600 a day just at one stand.”
And why wouldn’t they? You’ve got all the major fair food groups — batter, pork, fried and stick — all in one neat little hand-held bundle.
So, take that Texas, with your deep-fried Kool-Aid and Coke and chicken-fried bacon. Step off Ohio — we’re not (too) jealous of your deep-fried bacon cheddar mashed potatoes on a stick. And California, you can keep your Maggot Melt (deep-fried maggots on a bun with cheese … what the …?) and raccoon meat on a stick. Minnesota, we’re even betting this baby’s got one up on your corn dog pizza.
“The Iowa State Fair will be their U.S. debut, and we’ll only be selling them at one stand — the one up the hill by the AE stage,” Campbell warned. “We’re trying to get people up the hill. It gets kind of slow up there. And if it’s good for us, it’ll be good for the fair.”