The biggest, baddest, most belly-busting of them all, this entry’s gonna be in multiple parts, if not multiple pages.
Blue Moon Dine-In Theater serves scoops of raw cookie dough in this aptly-named Bowl O’ Dough. Flavors include Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough (which is gluten-free, strangely enough), European Cookie Butter (made with Biscoff cookies), Brownie Batter Swirl (which is a mix of chocolate chip cookie and brownie batter dough), and Lemon Ricotta Cheesecake with Blueberries (consisting of fresh curd ricotta cheesecake, blueberries, and lemons in a sugar cookie dough). It all comes with a scoop of ice cream on top and side of sea salt-flavored ice milk. You had me until the end. Salty milk? Blech.
Because hipsters attend state fairs too. This Deep-Fried Avocado is served with chipotle ranch on the side, but it just might be “the only food on earth that’s not better deep fried.”
The Swing Dancer Sandwich comes from the Hideaway Speakeasy and takes honey-smoked salmon, capers, and cucumbers and serves them with dill cream cheese on pumpernickel bread. What, you couldn’t deep-fry it too?
Another shocker, the Bacon Fluffernutter is grilled, not deep-fried. And is that newspaper it’s served on? Ew! Anyway, the Sandwich Shop takes the classic Fluffernutter sandwich–which consists of marshmallow fluff, a spread made from liquefied marshmallows, and peanut butter–adds bacon and uses cinnamon buns for the bread.
The Bacon Up Pup brings it back to familiar, on-a-stick territory. Brought to you by Granny’s Kitchen Fudge Puppies, it’s a bacon-infised Belgian waffle dipped in chocolate, soaked in maple syrup, and smothered with whipped cream and bacon bits.
Also on the psuedo-breakfast train is Lulu’s Breakfast Buddy Bowl, a mix of hash browns, scrambled eggs, cheddar cheese, and bacon served in a waffle bowl. It’s also topped with a biscuit, green onions, and country sausage gravy.
Minnesota State Fair 2017: (continued)
Sarah’s Tipsy Pies offers this Brown Ale and Onion Gouda Tipsy Pie which takes onions caramelized in Lift Bridge Brewery’s Chestnut Hill brown ale, adds in smoked Gouda cheese, and bakes it in a crunchy pie crust. The pies are then sprinkled with onion sugar and a sweet beer glaze.
Ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-cherry Bombs are deep-fried red licorice topped with powdered sugar. Says one reviewer: “Tastes like lipstick.” One question: Twizzlers or Red Vines?
The Chili Maple Bacon donut uses flour milled in Minneapolis to make a cake donut that’s smothered in a chili maple glaze and sprinkled with hunks of Minnesota-made candied bacon. Is $6.50 too much for state pride?
Try a “rich and real…Minnesota meal” of Swedish-style Cranberry Wild Rice Meatballs covered in lingonberry sauce and rounded out with mashed potatoes and gravy, cornbread, and coleslaw.
Popovers are another Minnesota point of pride, but Lulu’s Chocolate Popover with Peanut Butter Spread was, to one fairgoer, “overbaked” and “deer on your fender dead” to another. How could they get peanut butter wrong?
What do you do with a vegetable at the state fair? Roast it, dip it in mayonnaise, smother it in Doritos, and drown it in “a half gallon of institutional nacho cheese.”
Minnesota State Fair 2017: (continued)
The Italian Bomba is a gut bomb of beer-braised pork shoulder layered with prosciutto cotto ham, fontina cheese, giardiniera–which is an Italian relish–and garlic aioli sauce on a grilled ciabatta roll.
How do you make beef stroganoff walkable? Turn it into a Hot Pocket! The Blue Barn’s Hill Country Beef Pocket comes with black pepper mushroom cream sauce on the side for dippin’.
Although the picture might be deceiving, the Giant Egg Roll on a Stick is a traditional Vietnamese egg roll the size of a burrito that’s deep fried and served on a stick.
Duck Bacon Wantons are served by Giggles’ Campfire Grill–don’t you just love these names?! These deep-fried wontons are stuffed with applewood-smoked duck bacon, cream cheese, and grilled sweet corn and served with apricot red wine sauce on the side.
Double Dose of Pork Belly is “[t]he answer to ‘How much is too much bacon?‘” RC’s BBQ makes a cheeseburger out of ground pork belly, tops it with crispy smoked pork belly, and smothers it in habanero bbq sauce, pepjack cheese, coleslaw, and pickled onions served on a toasted slider bun.
These Honey Puffs, also called Loukamades, are deep-fried dough balls smothered in a thick, sticky honey glaze and sprinkled with cinnamon and sugar.
Minnesota State Fair 2017: (continued)
Memphis Totchos cover tater tots with whipped cream, bacon, and peanut sauce. “There’s a reason why we don’t put whipped cream and chocolate on our baked potatoes,” says one guinea pig. “Please, make it stop,” moans another.
The Mighty Midway must’ve assumed that of all the ingredients that go into a sundae, people like ice cream the least. Their Mini Donut Gourmet Sundaes replace ice cream with mini cinnamon sugar donuts and top them with cinnamon apples, Ghirardelli caramel, and homemade vanilla whipped cream. What, no cherry on top?
Mini Sconuts are buttermilk scone holes filled with chocolate, marshmallow, and Nutella before they’re deep-fried and smothered in powdered sugar. Only three per order.
Mobsters’ Caviar is a crab-flavored cream cheese offered with “dreary baguette” on the side. This offering looks quite different from the fresh crab meat and cream cheese dip the State Fair website promised.
Perking things right up is the Pizzarito. “How has mankind gone this long without turning a pizza into a deep-fried burrito?” wrote one writer. True to form, the Pizzarito rolls up pepperoni, Italian sausage, risotto, mozzarella, and marinara in a flour tortilla, bastes it in garlic butter, Parmesan cheese, and Italian spices, and cooks it up with a side of marinara.
Minnesota State Fair 2017: (continued)
This Sonoran sausage, called ONE.BAD.DOG., is a pork sausage stuffed with pepper jack cheese and green chile that’s then wrapped in bacon and baked before being served on a cornmeal-dusted bun with poblano sweet corn salsa and avocado sour cream.
One reviewer promises “you’ll be reading a lot about” the kernza dough this Sweet Corn Blueberry Eclair’s made of. Kernza is, apparently, a perennial wheatgrass, and this eclair’s made from Minnesota-grown and -milled grain. It has a sweet corn pastry cream filling and a blueberry glaze that’s altogether described as “a bit goopy, but good,” “worth every messy crumb,” and “I’m honestly not sure if I liked it or not, but I can tell you it’s like nothing I’ve ever tasted.”
Swine & Spuds’ bacon-wrapped pork belly and mashed potato croquettes are served on a stick and smothered in your choice of homestyle gravy, sweet chili sauce, or Korean Bolgogi barbecue sauce.
These Triple Truffle Trotters top thick-cut waffle fries with black diamond truffle oil mayo, sliced peppers, and thick chunks of bacon.
Deviation Stout Steak Taco Naan is marinated steak in dark chocolate- and cinnamon-infused stout beer, grilled, with added lettuce, pico de gallo, queso fresco, cilantro lime, and jalapeño ranch sauces all wrapped in warm naan flatbread.
“So trendy it appeared in the Twin Cities a week ago, literally,” this Thai Rolled Ice Cream takes your choice of five flavors of ice cream, mashes it up, spreads it thin, and rolls it up. It’s then stuffed in a cup with whipped cream, caramel, and pretzels.
Minnesota State Fair 2017: (continued)
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