Chicken Scrapple

Scrapple! What is it? Is it some species of apple? Is it industrial art? Even those who’ve eaten it might not know! Is it meatloaf? Is it sausage? Is it a winged god, riding a chariot of dongs across the very sky? WHO CAN TELL?

Scrapple is a traditional Pennsylvania Dutch dish that combines extreme thrift with high fat cooking, making it very popular in all parts of the country with traditional cooks. Anthropologically it is fascinating, as it is technically a form of polenta, but with a presentation that would make any Italian hemorrhage blood out of their eyeballs. As a flavor experience it has more in common with German sausage dishes, with their numerous spicing configurations and sometimes generous use of fillers, but the inclusion of corn marks the dish as definitively post Colombian exchange, and most evidence indicates it developed ingeniously in the Pennsylvania back country.

Enough Gibba Gabba! I had been researching scrapple and was intent upon making it, but lacked most of the ingredients. You see, traditional scrapple is first and foremost a pork dish, requiring generous quantities of pork organs and bones. I do not have any of those, nor do I know where to find them. BUT I had generous quantities of chicken parts, so I went with what I had. So I present to you: Chicken Scrapple

Two chickens worth of bones

Two bags of chicken giblets

A chicken breast

Water from steamed broccoli

A cup of thyme

Half a head of garlic

Salt and pepper to taste

An onion

Two stalks of celery

A big carrot or two mediums

One or two cloves

A tablespoon of whole cumin

Some Franks Red Hot

2 cup corn meal

At least five cups of stock

Flour

butter

The first step is to make a stock. Get the bones of at least one chicken, I used two, put them in water, and boil/ simmer for like a day. This is easier if you have a crock pot, but you can just use an oven burner if its all you have. Just use a big pot and make sure the bones are floating in a generous quantity of water. There is no need to fill the pot, just make sure the parts are submerged, or could be if they didn’t float. After a day or so, taste the stock. It should kick you in the face like some kind of liquid, chicken version of Chuck Norris. Add salt to taste, but you probably want more than you think you want. As a rule of thumb aim for how commercial chicken broths taste. You are unlikely to actually use as much salt as them, which is a good thing, but salt will bring out flavors. Now is also a good time to add pepper. Once the salt is dissolved, strain out the bones and return the stock to the pot.

I happened to steam some broccoli for a unrelated dish and decided to reuse the water for this stage, but its prolly not necessary. Just make sure you add a bit of water so nothing burns, and then add the chicken organs from the giblet bags of two grocery store birds. Also toss in one chicken breast. Simmer over night.

Get ye a food processor. Add any hard spices you are going to use and powder their asses, the add in the onion, the celery, the carrots, give them a whirl, then fish out the chicken parts from the stock and add them to the food processor. Give that a blend, and then start to think about spicing. I went with what I had and what seemed like it would taste good together and the ingredients above are an approximation based on what I remember, but don’t take it as gospel. Process everything together until it’s kind of a paste, then add 1 cup of corn meal and process again until combine.

Pour the stock into a big bowl and return the pot to the burner. Make sure it’s on the cleanish side. Add one cup of the stock back in, and whisk together with one cup of corn meal until smooth, then put the whisk aside and get a wooden spoon. Turn on the heat to medium, and add two cups of stock, stirring continually. When all is combine, add the meat/corn/spice mixture and stir stir stir. When that is fully incorporated, add two more cups of stock and stir. Keep stiring. Make friends with stirring because you are gonna be doing this for a while. Turn up the heat until you see bubbles breaking the surface while you are still stirring, then reduce the heat to a high medium. You want the bubbles to keep on with the surface and the breaking whilst you stir. And stir. You are gonna be stirring for like 15 minutes. Just when you have ceased to care about this dish you will keep stirring. When you have begun to understand how a person could go through life as an alcoholic necrophiliac it will be time to resume stirring. When you have begun to look fondly upon the entertainment value of Star Trek: The Motion Picture you can take a short break. Ha! No, I’m kidding, your gonna have to keep stirring. When your mind has merged with the cosmos, just like the space baby in the ending of 2001: A Space Odyssey, you will be ejected from the overmind so that you can resume stirring.

When the mixture starts to pull away from the side of the pan you are done. Congratulations. All your friends and relatives will have died, but you will be able to feed your grand children some delicious scrapple, though they are going to have to wait a bit longer. Pour the mixture into a loaf pan and allow to cool, then place in the refrigerator over night.

The next day, take the loaf pan and flip it over onto a cutting board. Using your rage at the continued evil of the future, whack the loaf pan until the scrapple drops onto the cutting board. Pour a bit of flour onto a plate, melt some butter in a non-stick frying pan, and slice the scrapple into half inch slices. For each piece drop it into the flour on each side, then tap to remove the excess. Place the scrapple over a medium high heat in the butter for five minutes per side or until golden brown and delicious.

There! You are done. The presentations are numerous, from on a plate with some apple sauce to in a sandwich with sour crème and everything in between. Enjoy it with your remaining descendants and remind them that even in the future it is not polite to have your tentacles on the table, and stop secreting waste at your sister.