How to cook scrapple like my sister
My sister Janelle (in Villager print skirt and top) and me (with large pink ball).
Today is my sister Janelle's birthday, so I am honoring her with this post. My sister cooks some really weird stuff and scrapple is not the strangest by a long shot, but I think of it because she cooked it for me last week and I took some pictures of it so I can share the details. But first let me offer some context about my sister so that you can understand the background of why she cooks such weird stuff.
My sister is very sophisticated. She lives in California, but not in ordinary California. She lives in Pasadena. Pasadena is like a Brigadoon implant scooped up from the middle of old Virginia and plopped in the foothills near L.A. She serves tea, plays bridge and ALWAYS wears a hat to the races. She is the most perfect dessert eater my sister Norah and I have ever seen, and she could give lessons on how to hold a fork in the left hand and dessert spoon in the right, using the fork to push the food onto the spoon. It is a disappearing art and a thing of beauty when executed properly. She once learned to curtsy because she went to a reception in England where she met Prince Charles and Diana, the Princess of Wales. Of course, she executed a perfect curtsy and wore a perfect hat. I think it is this extraordinary level of sophistication that has allowed her to develop a culinary palette that includes some foods I have never heard of, let alone tasted. She adores raw oysters, which I liken to phlegm balls, and shad roe, which I think is interesting in theory but can never actually bring myself to eat. She used to carry cans of a particular brand of herring roe from Virginia back to California on the airplane in her suitcase which, in this day and age, would probably give TSA inspectors pause. She once referred to herring in sour cream as her "desert island food." A desert island food is the thing you would pick if you were stranded on a desert island and could only eat one thing for the rest of your life. I think it is safe to say that no one reading this post would have considered herring in sour cream a desert island food so, with that, I rest my case.
I was with my sisters for our annual beach get together last week, and that always means scrapple. Janelle buys it, although I don't know where, and I'm guessing we always have it at the beach because it is a North Carolina thing. I am quite certain it is NOT a California thing, although I would not be at all surprised if, one day in the future, Wolfgang Puck features a "Scrapple Pizza." So watch for that and take pride in the fact that you saw it coming.
WHAT IS SCRAPPLE?
While I'm glad you asked the question, I'm not sure you really want the answer. If you have a sensitive stomach, skip on down to the How To section and you can just read about how to cook it. Cast iron stomach people, stick with me because here come the gory details. Scrapple has its own Wikipedia page, which is more than I can say for myself. There it is described as "a mush of pork scraps and trimmings combined with cornmeal and wheat flour...and spices." Stick with that general description and you will still enjoy eating scrapple. As the article continues, they describe its composition: "Scrapple is typically made of hog offal, such as the head, heart, liver, and other trimmings, which are boiled with any bones attached (often the entire head), to make a broth. Once cooked, bones and fat are removed, the meat is reserved, and (dry) cornmeal is boiled in the broth to make a mush. The meat, finely minced, is returned to the pot and seasonings, typically sage, thyme, savory, black pepper, and others are added." Basically, anything that is no longer allowed to go into hotdogs goes into scrapple. It is a conservationist's dream come true, as nothing is wasted.
How to cook it
If you made it this far and have decided to give scrapple a try, you will not regret it. Scrapple really is delicious and I'm not saying that because my sisters bribed me to eat it on the promise that they would be nice to me. But I do think it's one of those things that only tastes good at the beach when my sister Janelle cooks it, and I don't ever plan to mess with that magic.
Slice 1/4" thick slices, fry it in fat, cover with a lid to cook through, serve to your sisters and enjoy.
