Wikipedia actually offers a really wonderful description of the cooking process (which actually sells the product to non-believers better than I can – maybe I’m being too harsh with the ‘lips and assholes’ thing?):
Scrapple got it’s name from the fact that it’s made of scraps the butcher was either going to throw out (aka, lips and assholes) or parts that are too small to be sold.
You must slice it, like pork roll, and fry it up till the outside is crispy and the inside is nice and soft and warm. The mush is formed into a loaf and that’s how it comes when you buy it. According to Wikipedia, scrapple is a savory mush (yes, that is what they said) of pork scraps and trimmings combined with cornmeal and flour, often buckwheat flour. Scrapple truly is made up of “lips and assholes”, although they don’t actually advertise that on any of the websites. Pork roll is often grilled or fried (for a double heart-attack) and should be cut slightly with either 2 or 4 slits on the outer edges so that it cooks more evenly and doesn’t curl. It looks like a big, long salami when it’s packaged whole.
BIZARRE FOODS SCAPPLE HOW TO
You can also buy pre-cut slices so you don’t have to figure out how to get it out of that damn sack. It is supposedly called this because of the ‘roll’ or tube-like cotton sack that it comes in when you buy it. Maybe they do this to make it sound more edible? Where I grew up, outside of Philadelphia, it was just simply called pork roll. Most people from New Jersey will call pork roll “Taylor Ham” after the Trenton-based manufacturer. According to one of the oldest and most popular pork roll manufacturers, Taylor Provisions, it is “a type of sausage-like pork product made from coarsely ground pork shoulder”. What is pork roll made of, you ask? Well, it’s a secret concoction, which consists mainly of pork ground up with bits of fat and seasonings, and then hung and cured in cotton bags…the rest is best left unsaid.ĭoes that help you understand it any better? Me neither. Well, I wasn’t until I read this explanation of pork roll on one website: I’m not afraid of knowing what exactly I’m eating – I’ll still try it. I now will eat cow balls if I’m in a country where cow balls are the local delicacy. I’m at a different stage with my eating than I was years ago. Sometimes, I thought, it was just better not knowing.īut my desire to know a bit more has led me to write this post. I remember my family telling me not to even look on the side of the package to read the ingredients because I may just never eat it again. I never asked what exactly either of these two treats were – for some reason, I just knew not to ask. Pork roll and scrapple were also often used in egg and cheese sandwiches too, which could possibly give you a coranary five minutes after you finished eating one.
To give you a bit of background, I grew up around Philadelphia, eating both of these tasty treats as a ‘breakfast side dish’, but only once a weekend since they were “bad for you”. So if you’ve eaten it your whole life without knowing what it actually is, please stop reading now. I refuse to ‘sugar coat’ what pork roll and scrapple are. Now, you may be thinking, could it be true!? A ROLL of pork? Rolled Pork? Scrapple? What the hell are these things? This HAS to be another form of lips and assholes, right? YES, YOU ARE RIGHT! And they are both absolutely delicious. I thought I’d spend a moment to introduce all our readers to a bit of culinary genius that is often considered fatty and ‘bad for you’ that is really only available in the New Jersey/Philadelphia area – PORK ROLL and SCRAPPLE. I’ll pray extra hard next weekend that I’m not damned to hell (even though I’m on my way anyways). Ok, so I’m a little bit gross this last Sunday of Lent asking you, dear readers, to not “pork this roll”.