On visits to Philadelphia (and southern New Jersey), I always look forward to scrapple. The ingredients are off-putting: ground pork offal such as skin, brains, tongue, heart and liver mixed with cornmeal and spices. It’s like pork-parts polenta.
Everything’s mixed together and then formed into a loaf that is then cooked and packaged (buy Habbersett if you can get it). Then the loaf is sliced into half-inch pieces and cooked again on a hot griddle for about ten minutes per side. The wait is agonizing and it is tempting to try to speed it up, but resist. The reward is a crispy exterior with a mushy interior.
Some people eat it with ketchup, the savages. It’s fucking breakfast.
Why it’s not available in Iowa — with its more than 17 million pigs, 12,600 acres of corn and fair share of Germans — has always stumped me.
(If you know of a place that has it, leave a note in the comments.)