Deep Fried Coke

Out of the frying pan in Texas

Imagine a world where helium-bottomed women graze on deep-fried turkey legs, like the forequarters of Stone Age wildebeest, and podgy men wearing baseball caps and polo shirts tucked into their shorts queue to see the original Batmobile, hidden behind a shower curtain.

Well, imagine no more. Welcome to the State Fair of Texas.

Held every year in Dallas, the fair is the largest of its kind in the US. An agricultural show of the sort familiar to most Australians, it features the usual array of animal petting, jam judging and sheep wrestling. If there is one thing that distinguishes the event in Dallas, however, it's the food.

In a nation where every meal can sometimes seem a celebratory indulgence, the State Fair is a chance for Americans to drop all pretence of restraint and really make pigs of themselves.

Each year the fair runs a food competition that has become almost a national institution. With prizes in the "most creative" and "best taste" categories, past winners have included purveyors of deep-fried cookie dough; deep-fried peanut butter, jelly and banana sandwiches; deep-fried peaches and cream; deep-fried banana split; deep-fried Coke (a Coca-Cola-flavoured doughnut covered in warm Coke syrup), and even deep-fried butter.

Add to this such perennial favourites as deep-fried cheesecake, deep-fried peach cobbler, deep-fried peach cobbler on a stick and deep-fried pork chop on a stick, and you soon realise the State Fair of Texas is perhaps the closest you can get to being inside Homer Simpson's head.

Set in the striking art deco grounds of Fair Park, the event features hundreds of food stands and at its centre is a vast food hall. Inside, a shroud of oil mist issuing from dozens of deep-fat fryers almost obscures the view.

Here you can buy such southern classics as fried green tomatoes and alligator kebabs, but also sample some of the more unusual offerings, such as deep-fried margaritas and Kool-Aid pickles. Yes, that's pickles in energy drink-flavoured brine. In comparison, Pickle Pops - pickle-flavoured ice blocks - seem like a nourishing throwback to more innocent times.

Manning his stall in the food hall is Mark Zable, this year's title-holder of "most creative" for his latest invention, deep-fried beer. Pushing the laws of science and gastronomy about as far as they will go, Zable's deep-fried beer proves to be a confection of small, ravioli-like parcels topped with an oily slick of raincoat-yellow cheese and filled (as the name implies) with liquid beer.

San Diego County Fair: Don't Drink the Kool-Aid « My Burning Kitchen

I tried the chocolate corn dog, just to say I did. A few of my friends/coworkers said “it’s actually kinda good!” but I had to disagree. It was just too confusing for your taste buds. I took one bite and handed the rest to my husband (I was pretty surprised that he thought it was OK – we’re usually in agreement on that stuff). The Kool-Aid I tried didn’t have any undissolved granules, and it seemed like it almost could work with a little improvement, because it was basically a cupcake/doughnut hybrid that just happened to be strawberry Kool Aid flavored.

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