Fried Food Fiasco

For some inscrutable reason the other day, I found myself at the Kansas State Fair. For some other strange reason, they had a giraffe. In Kansas. This one is going to take me a while to get over.

Fairs are not just good for giraffes, however. They are also the native home of some of the most unhealthy foods known to human kind. In our infinite wisdom, my party and I decided to sample everything we could find.

We managed to track down fried pickles, fried mushrooms, fried olives and cheese, fried peaches, fried mars bars, fried snickers bars and fried oreos. We also stumbled across some fried pie, but at that point, we had lost the will to live.

Fried Pickles 



 These were probably the thing I was most afraid to try, and ultimately the least surprising (except the mushrooms). It was a pickle. It was really hot, which was weird, and crunchy due to the cornmeal coating. You were expected to dip it in ranch sauce, which ultimately didn't seem to really add or take away from the experience of eating a fried pickle spear. 

Fried Mushrooms



I'm not really sure what to say about these. They were fried mushrooms. Ever had a fried mushroom before? They were probably better than these. The batter was absolutely flavorless and the mushrooms didn't really seem to have much going for them either. Again, these were served with ranch dressing, though these fried fungi were a much less subtile method of finding an excuse to put said dipping sauce into your mouth.

Fried Olives and Cheese



Words cannot even begin to describe the culinary horror that awaited as my teeth first pierced the crispy peppered outer shell of these nuggets of despair. Fool that I was, I actually expected good things from this abomination of a food product. Typical spoiled Seattlite that I am, when I heard "Olives and Cheese", my mind went to greek olives and feta cheese. 

I was a fool.

Diced black olives and canned nacho cheese were the order of the day. This tasted only slightly worse than something you might expect to find sitting, day old and forgotten, in the warming case of your local gas station.

Fried Peaches



These were easily the hands and above winner of the day. Fried in a crunchy batter I didn't immediately identify, the peaches were delicious warm, both tart and sweet at the same time, and came with a cinnamon cream dipping sauce that was every bit as good as the peaches themselves. In a word: Awesome.

Fried Candy Bars



I can see why someone might like these. They were hot, gooey, funnel cake battered on the outside and sickly sweet on the inside. Personally, I'm not a huge fan of candy bars, but the appeal was undeniable. We had both the Mars bar and the Snickers bar, both deep fried, both a melted morass of chocolate and caramel, both singing the siren song of the future promise of type 2 diabetes.  

Fried Oreos




I've had these before, and these were not the finest examples of the form. A properly deep fried oreo will have melted the cream filling inside and been absorbed by the cookies. With ours, the filling had barely melted, resulting in a slightly crumbly cookie and a somewhat grainy filling. Less than ideal. If done right, however, these can be quite delicious.