The Craziest Fried Foods of the 2013 State Fair of Texas

“Arteries…closing…tell my family…yum…”

~AFFotD’s (Former) Intern Food Taster

If you’ve ever been to this site, you’ve probably realized that we talk a lot (and we mean a lot) about fried foods.  Seriously, just look at the top of the page and hover your mouse over “America’s Culinary Treats.”  Yup, there it is, third item down.  Of course, the reason why we talk about fried food so often is that America does fried food better than anyone, and we have more revolutionary breakthroughs in fried food technology than the human genome project.

Naturally, state fairs and carnivals are where the newest, most insane fried foods come out to play, and this year’s Texas State Fair was no exception.  So, we’re here to give you a partial list of the most insane fried foods to be featured this year, because it’s been five hours since your last fried food dish, and you’re starting to get the shakes.

The Craziest Fried Foods of the 2013 State Fair of Texas

Each year, the Texas State Fair gives out awards to two separate insane-but-brilliant fried foods—the one they deem to be the most creative, and the they claim has the best taste.  The “Best Taste” award often goes to delicious sounding fried foods that are inventive, but not all that surprising, like 2012’s winner (fried bacon cinnamon roll).  The most creative dishes are where we take evolutionary leaps in fried food preparation, like 2006’s fried Coke (as in Coca-Cola) or 2009’s deep fried butter.  Of course, not every worthwhile dish ends up winning these awards, which is why you have sites like affotd.com that can pick up the slack by letting you know all this year’s best fried food innovations and giving their due deference.  That said, we should probably start off with 2013’s most creative.

Fried Thanksgiving Dinner

“How does one deep fry a Thanksgiving dinner?” you might be asking if you’ve never heard the American proverb “If it’s tasty, we can deep fry it” before.  Of course you can deep fry Thanksgiving Dinner, how dare you assume otherwise.  In this instance, you take stuffing, mix it with turkey and cream corn, roll it into a ball to fry and serve with gravy.  We’re also pretty sure that they have some cranberry sauce there as well, just in case you wanted to double dip your balled Thanksgiving, which of course you do because this is America and that sounds wonderful.

Deep-Fried Cuban Roll

While fried Thanksgiving was deemed the most creative, judges this year felt that this fried Cuban roll was the best tasting item available to them.  While you might question the American qualities of a Cuban roll (while the Cuban sandwich originated in Cuba, it was largely developed by Cuban immigrants living in Florida, and making any sandwich a deep-fried wrap automatically adds America points to any food) it does sound quite delicious, so we can’t fault the judges on this one.  This roll is filled with slow cooked pork shoulder, ham, pickles, and a secret sauce, which is all spread onto a slice of Swiss cheese, which is then rolled up in pastry dough and deep fried.  If your first thoughts were “that sounds delicious, and also incredibly greasy” you’d be correct.  It’s served with a majo sauce, because if you’re going to have a cheese-and-pork-induced heart attack, you might as well wash it down with a green chili sauce of indeterminate spiciness.

Deep-Fried Chocolate Chip Burrito

The description for this item on the Texas Fair website seems simple enough.  “Chocolate chip cookie dough fried in a flour tortilla.  Served with chocolate or strawberry drizzle and whipped cream, as well as adult onset diabetes.”  Okay so we might have tinkered with it a little towards the end, but that’s just us keeping Texas honest.  If you decide to eat a fried burrito filled with cookie dough and you expect to just go about your life without a compromised ability to produce insulin, you clearly have an immortality complex, in which case, have a second!  Or a third!  You’re invincible!  While you’re at it, you might as well have some…

Fried Nutella

This item actually goes by the name of “Awesome Deep Fried Nutella” which, come on, guys, you’re trying way too hard.  You’ve taken Nutella, which is basically cupcake frosting we don’t feel guilty about eating off a spoon, whipped it with cream cheese, and fried it between Phyllo dough sheets.  You don’t need to fluff up your name to convince us this is something we’d want to put in our bodies.  That would be like the person who invented the hot dog deciding to give it a name like “Delicious Flavor Meat Stick of Awesome” after deciding that that a tube of deliciously salted nitrates wasn’t going to sell itself.  Trust your audience, guys, if you ever went up to an American and asked, “Would you like some fried Nutella?” you’d never even get to finish the question because as soon as you say “Fried” they’d push you over while yelling ‘GIMME’ and eat whatever was in your plate.

Chicken-Fried Meatloaf

Many of our Southern readers have had, and enjoy, chicken fried steak, but we’d wager that it’s less common for them to find chicken-fried meatloaf, which honestly is more palpable to our sensibilities.  Sure, anything fried is delicious, but cooking a steak in chicken-fried breading sort of takes away from the flavor of, you know, steak.  But, if you replace that steak with a loaf of seasoned beef, it’s a lot easier for us to believe that you’re enhancing the flavor from “good” to “great” by frying it in some chicken grease.   This dish comes with garlic mashed potatoes, cream gravy, and a ketchup/brown sugar glaze for dipping, because if you’ve just finished eating the last two items on this list, you might as well add that last bit of sugar to ensure you complete your transformation from “fried food connoisseur who just gained twenty pounds in one meal” to “an actual sentient sugar cube with fried breading stuck to it.”

Deep-Fried King Ranch Casserole

We don’t know who “Fernie” is, but apparently Fernie is responsible for “Fernie’s Deep Fried King Ranch Casserole.”  We’re still not 100% sure what this dish actually is.  If we had to guess, based on the vague descriptions of it offered, they pretty much did their own variation of a Velveeta Salsa Dip, breaded it, and deep fried it into the shape of Texas before sticking a Texas flag in there and serving it with red, white, and blue tortilla chips and a choice of salsa-infused cheese or sour cream.  There’s apparently chicken, and cream of mushroom soup involved, as well as Ro-Tel, but basically at the end of the day, we’re talking about a cheese-intensive fried casserole that’s shaped like Texas.  If you can think of a more fitting dish to get at the Texas State Fair you clearly managed to find the remains of Pancho Villa and deep fry his femur, in which case holy shit you’re a cannibal.  What is wrong with you, it was all fun and games until you had to go and take things too far, you mummified-flesh-eating monster.  Or, more realistically, you might have ordered the following item, which is about as Texas-centric as fried casserole.

Texas Fried Fireball

This really is a great year for the manufacturer of miniature-Texan-flags-on-toothpicks, as well as fans of greasy and spicy fried foods.  The Texas Fried Fireball takes pimento cheese, pickles, cayenne pepper, and (of course) bacon, rolls it in a ball, dips it into buttermilk, and then covers the whole thing with jalapeno-infused batter before deep frying it.  If that sounds too healthy for you, they serve it with a cup of chipotle ranch dressing for dipping, which would probably explain why most of the people who tried this dish spent the next few hours aggressively punching themselves in the chest muttering, “Damn.  Heart.  Plaque.  Git a move on.”  The end result is greasy, spicy, and delicious (though apparently only good for a few bites of cardiac distress).  But then again, these three little bites of buttermilk bacon cheese probably have more calories than the entire dollar menu at Taco Bell, so we’re not complaining.  At least, until someone decides to outdo all of these fried dishes by deep-frying the Taco Bell Doritos Loco Taco.  Which actually sounds wonderful.  Please get to work on that, America, and be sure to send us samples.