I absolutely love molasses and don’t think enough foods contain it. I’ll pour some in a spoon and eat it straight! I’ll have to look into recipes for shoo fly pie; the pictures look delicious!
Comment on What is the most beloved food from where you live, and what's the most divisive?
anon6789@lemmy.world 23 hours ago
Southeast Pennsylvania has a number of unique foods.
For the wider population, our most famous food that people enjoy is the Philly cheesesteak, thinly shaved ribeye steak, grilled on a flat top, with American (or preferably sharp provolone) melted either on top or mixed in, on a long Italian roll. Sounds pretty basic, but the ribeye keeps the meat tender and juicy with its fat content, and the proper roll balances the taste and texture correctly, and I think that local roll is the key, and what makes a tasty cheesesteak hard to find once you get too far from the area.
Most divisive is scrapple, which was traditionally a mix of leftover cuts of meat and organs ("everything but the squeal") of the pig, thickened with cornmeal, and formed into a loaf that looks like a meaty slab of uncured cement. Grilled up proper, it looks somewhat like a square hand formed sausage, but it’s the grey mystery meat story that keeps people away. I was tortured too much by the story by taunting relatives as a kid, so I still don’t eat this, but my wife and brother love it.
For local foods from my culture, the Pennsylvania Dutch have given us way more odd foods than just scrapple!
My favorite is shoo fly pie. This reminds me of my grammom every time I think of it! 🥰 It is a molasses pie (though our family uses table syrup for a more delicate flavor) that has a bottom treacle type layer and a cakey top layer, topped with crumbs like on a struesel/coffee cake. I’ve never seen anything like it anywhere else, but for Funny Cake, another PA Dutch pie, which is essentially a chocolate syrup/vanilla cake version of shoo fly. Both good, and local markets will sell a half/half version where you get half a shoo fly and half a funny cake together (cut and repackaged, not baked together).
The divisive food that is still pretty common is Lebanon bologna. It is a cured, smoked, and fermented beef bologna. Very smokey and a bit sour, it can be a strange combo to the uninitiated, and is also available in a sweet version, and even that sweet vs regular can be a matter of contention among fans.
There are a lot more odd PA Dutch foods like stuffed pig stomach, souse, our pot pie that is actually a soup, ham balls, but that stuff you generally have to seek out anymore.
tpyo@lemmy.world 20 hours ago
anon6789@lemmy.world 18 hours ago
There are a million recipes, all a bit different, and none is right or wrong, everyone will say their family’s style is best of course.
So if you ask me, this is the best!
My writing is slightly clearer than the card I have from my gram, plus the measurements on the right column are for two 8 inch pies, where the left is her original recipe for three pies. That’s too much pie for just the two of us! 😄
I prefer to bake by weight, since scaling with imperial volumetric measures can get into weird fractions.
Syrup in this recipe is Turkey syrup, but if you want the molasses taste, use molasses for the syrup. Soda is baking soda.
Mix the first 4 batter ingredients into fine crumbs, and reserve about 1/3 to 1/2 cup, then mix in the remainder of the batter ingredients.
Pour filling mixture into your pie shells.
Add batter on top. It will push a lot of filling up top, but as it bakes, the batter will puff and come back to the top and the syrupy part will sink.
Bake 350F for 1 hour
Put the reserved crumbs on top when it comes out the oven.
tpyo@lemmy.world 16 hours ago
Hey thanks for the recipe!! I think two pies might still be too much! Appreciated nonetheless
anon6789@lemmy.world 15 hours ago
I keep one and take one to dinner at someone’s house. You could split that recipe again down to one pie if you have a cooking scale (or estimate some fractions with the volumetric amounts). It keeps me from having leftover syrup that I don’t use for anything else.
Other random recipes should still get you something you should enjoy. It’s hard to go wrong with all those ingredients, you’re going to end up with something good!
Hah, that takes me back.
I was kind of surprised when I had it as a kid, as it didn’t really taste like hot dogs nor sausage, and oddly tasted more like a hashbrown-variant with some kind of pleasant, mystery seasoning. But after I took my first nutrition course in college, that was the end of my scrapple days. :P
Hmm, so you’re Pennsylvania Dutch it kinda sounds like?
Btw for the Philly area, I also want to add two favorites: soft pretzels & water ice. Total junk food really, but surprisingly tasty. Soft pretzels themselves are actually kind of odd, since they’re not unlike eating half-baked bread, but with a vaguely crusty outer layer, salt crystals, and hopefully stone ground mustard. They really shouldn’t taste as good as they do.
anon6789@lemmy.world 18 hours ago
I could eat infinite soft pretzels! 🤤
I usually eat them plain, I love them so much as-is, but uber processed melty cheese or mustard are good too. I like stone ground, but it always seems to make me a little….windy. 😅
And you have to say water like “wooder” to keep it proper.
I feel both of those have become US foods now though. They seem pretty popular in a lot of places.
My granpop could speak PA Dutch with the Amish still when we would go to Lancaster to do business things out there, but that was the last somewhat traditional generation of our family.
“Crick” for creek, “earl” for oil … takes me back. I just looked up a couple more and some sources are saying dentist was also pronounced “Dennis,” apparently(!) Haha, I don’t remember that one.
Well, nominally… or to extent, yeah. But not unlike a proper cheesesteak, I find that they need to be made fresh and locally for best taste. For example, going to the freezer section and buying water ice and soft pretzels is invariably disappointing. And for me it’s been decades, but the last time I tried making homemade pretzels, they were a crushing disappointment. I believe that’s because the dough is prepared to fairly tight standards which you really need to get right for best ‘Philly’-style results.
Last time I was at 30th Street Station (which was years ago) I remember a popular stand called…. “Anne’s Pretzels” or something like that with a blue logo. I thought to myself “great! they’re right in the heart of Philly, so they can’t possibly screw up a soft pretzel. Err, nnnnnnope! 😅
Hmm, I wonder how far back you have to go before PA Dutch and German Deutsch were co-intelligible… 🤔
anon6789@lemmy.world 15 hours ago
I guess we do have more strange pronunciations than I think of… I feel I don’t hear as much Dutchiness as I used to though, which I miss.
The PA Dutch wiki doesn’t seem to give a real answer about the exact origins of the language. I’m not very knowledgeable on European history, but all the warring and stuffing of borders and people and then the migration and solution is the language loses me even more. It’s probably one of those things that even they would find each other to have localized accents and different terminology among themselves here.
I’ve made some ok pretzels, but I don’t think it’s the same without something a little more dangerously alkaline to really get the outside right. Baking soda water works ok, but it’s not the same. I like the homemade stuff more as pretzel buns, where it’s still a key player in whatever food it’s holding, but it isn’t a solo act.
Are you talking about Auntie Anne’s Pretzels?
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I looked it up and was surprised they’re actual from Pennsylvania. I always thought they were ok bread sticks, but not pretzels.
I think Wawa pretzels suck too, but they are cheap and darn near everywhere so I’ve adapted to the taste, but there still meh but ok enough to scratch the itch.