scrapple creations | What is scrapple? Underappreciated breakfast meat? Gross pig offal? On this scrapple blog we will answer these questions and more!

I ran across this fabulous book recently. Pennsylvania Dutch Cookery written in 1935.

BEHOLD! A brand new scrapple + waffles invention! It's creator, Israel Engle, calls it The Scraffle!!

Beer for Breakfast? Yes, please! But just to be clear, I'm talking about a beer by Dogfish Head. Its ingredients:

• Maple syrup
• Barley smoked over applewood
• Roasted Chicory
• Lactose (milk sugar)
• Coffee

And something else...what is that one last ingredient? I'm having a hard time remembering...[scratches head]. Oh right, scrapple!

HOLY PIG OFFAL! There's scrapple beer?!?! That's right, there is scrapple beer. 

Like you, I fell for it. Multiple people shared the following photo with me and I got excited:

If bacon is good enough for ice cream, why not scrapple? But, alas. The good folks at Billy Penn did some research and found out it was all too good to be true.

“We have 16 different varieties of specialty ice cream and sorbet in pints, and the selection can vary by store and season,” said Wegmans spokesperson Katie Redmond. “Scrapple is not one of those flavors.”  😭

[emoji added by me, but should be part of their official statement]

In fact, that photo of Wegmans Scrapple Ice Cream ("scrapple chunks!" #nomnomnom) has been quietly living on the internet since 2010 when it was created by Pete Ruggieri and posted on his Facebook page Scrapple is the New Bacon. A recent reshare shoved it into the scrapple spotlight, leading to thousands of reshares (seriously) and a rollercoaster of emotions.

The Dream Doesn't Die

I thought the journey would end there and we would all be left wondering, would scrapple ice cream be any good? Would it be made with real chunks? Can you somehow maintain the crispy outside while still enveloping it in ice cream?

But Danya Henninger, Cassie Owen and Angie Nassar at Billy Penn wouldn't let the dream die. They wondered aloud too, and then did something about it. And suddenly scrapple ice cream existed!

I WAS ALONE AND NEEDED DINNER

The house was empty other than the pets, myself and about 12 bricks of RAPA scrapple in the fridge. I was hungry so obviously scrapple was going to be part of my immediate plans. But just a few slices seemed kind of...boring.

Pizza and meat go together like...well...pizza and meat, I guess. But if anyone is familiar with putting meat on top of pizza, it's Frank Maimone, owner of Rustica Pizza in the Northern Liberty neighborhood of Philadelphia.

His restaurant has all kinds of nutty pizzas, like a rueben pizza, a BBQ pulled pork pizza with slaw, a brisket pizza, and a chicken molé pizza. (His motto: "If you like it as a food, you can make it work.")

If I'd known about this restaurant before last week, I probably would have a different reaction to his scrapple pizza. Instead of, "THAT'S AMAZING THAT'S AMAZING THAT'S AMAZING!!" I would have said, "Dude, what took you so long?!"

"Vegan scrapple?! You've gotta be kidding me!" I know, my scrapple-loving friends, I know. 

I had a similar reaction when fellow scrapple lover, Steven Messick, posted a link about vegan scrapple to our Scrapple Facebook page.

As reported by West Chester Dish, vegan scrapple has recently become available at the Artisan Exchange Market in West Chester, PA.

"Any day with scrapple is like Christmas!" says Gregg S. on our Scrapple Facebook page. Well, I guess that's true, but technically only one day a year is actually Christmas.

On that wonderful day, how do you incorporate scrapple into your Christmas festivities? Maybe a side dish along with some sort of casserole. Or maybe scrapple and eggs as you unwrap gifts. Man, that sounds delicious. But I'm wondering if we can do even more.

Here are a few ideas to make scrapple a bigger part of everyone's Christmas:

1. Scrapple Christmas Stockings

Mom, Dad, Little Susie, Fido - sure the whole family gets a stocking over the fireplace. But what does that say about your choice in breakfast meat? Absolutely nothing. Which is why we should all be hanging scrapple Christmas stockings by the chimney with care.

Bonus: I bet a brick of scrapple would slide right in to that stocking. Shopping just got easier!

Do you watched the Food Network show Chopped? I don't. But about a week ago I got a few messages that I should be watching at that exact moment because the chefs on the show were cooking with scrapple!

So what the heck is Chopped and why aren't they always cooking with scrapple?

In short, Chopped is another one of those cooking competition shows. Each episode, four chefs are pitted against one another doing their best to cook a fantastic dish in 30 minutes that is created from "mystery ingredients" discovered only seconds before the clock starts ticking.

Normally the ingredients, I imagine, are chosen by some expert chef who is a show consultant. But this specific episode was a "Viewers' Choice." Fans of the show were allowed to vote on what crazy ingredients they wanted to see the challengers using.

Naturally, when the public is given a voice they make wise decisions, and that's how scrapple made it on the show. Awesome, right? The chefs did not agree.