We are having a mid-west themed potluck to send off a co-worker moving to Indianna. I am going to make pigs in a blanket. What is the canonical recipe: full-sized dogs or Lil’ Smokies, cheese or no cheese?
I don’t think there is canon on these. I’ve had them every way possible: hot dog, Lil Smokey, link sausage, Vienna sausage, cheese, no cheese, crescent roll dough, biscuit dough, whatever. Go with what you have on hand and call it good.
Don’t forget the bacon.
As a native Hoosier, my experience is that it’s Lil’ Smokies, in crescent rolls, cheese optional, but not preferred. I loathe them, but that’s what I saw served as party snacks for the first few decades of my life.
If you want any other fun (or weird) Indiana food ideas, let me know. (And what part of Indiana is the person moving to? That makes a difference.)
She’s moving where the Univ of Indiana is.
No such thing. You must mean Indiana University. The main campus is in Bloomington, which was my beloved, adopted hometown of 8+ years, but there are several branch campuses, scattered all over the state.
I hope she’s moving to Bloomington. It’s a wonderful city, and I loved it there. (The food there, however, is slightly more sophisticated than many other parts of the state.)
That means south-central Indiana, so I’ll just run with that:
Slop BBQ sauce (K.C. Masterpiece, if you want to get fancier than Kraft) over anything, even those breaded chicken fingers, and pour some Ranch dressing in a bowl for dipping.
Pour a couple of cans of store-brand pork’n’beans into an ovenproof dish. Add half a pound of brown sugar (joking, really only a few tablespoons), a chopped onion, and about half a bottle of ketchup. Bake for an hour or so, anywhere from 350 to 450. Doesn’t really matter.
Mix Lipton onion soup packet with sour cream. Serve as dip with potato chips, or, if you’re really daring, raw vegetables.
Add shredded cabbage and carrots to lime Jell-O before it sets. (Yes, it’s disgusting. It’s also Hoosier food.)
Now that I’ve turned your stomach and probably terrified your co-worker, I do have a wonderful and easy cake recipe that is a fairly traditional Indiana one, if anyone feels like baking. I’ll go find it.
Hmm, I have always thought that pigs in a blanket was breakfast sausage wrapped in a pancake. Liberal application of maple syrup is implied.
Another Hoosier delicacy- deep-fried (or skillet-fried, if you’re a wuss) breaded pork tenderloin sandwiches with a liberal application of dill pickle slices, onions and yellow
mustard.
I had a gargantuan pig in the blanket from at a truckstop, once. Heatlamp fare. A Giant 1/4 pound smoked sausage in a puff pastry blanky. Not bad… the sausage wasn’t that great, but it was juicy, smoky, and salty, and the puff pastry was flaky. Definitely a smoked sausage of the generic American variety. The product was a bit old, probably would have been much better fresh from the oven. That’s one drawback to this dish as a brought dish… they need to be served immediately from the oven, otherwise they keep bad.
Yea, where I live, pigs-in-the-blanket is a cabbage roll… usually of the Eastern European descendency. I was deceived.
Actually, deep frying is probably a healthier alternative to skillet frying in some cases. It’s all about temperature… a clean, constant, and full submersion in high temp oil, as achieved in a deep fat fryer generally results in less fat absorbtion in breaded products than a shallow fry. It all ties into constancy, volume, and stored heat of the cooking medium and its container.
Here in Texas, you would probably have to have a Czech grandmother and a relative who makes venison sausage in order to make the canonical pig in a blanket (sorry, I’m Scots-Irish, so no recipes here.) The best I had was made by a friend who used kolache dough. It wasn’t traditional though, and she complained that the grease from the sausage made the dough too heavy.
Me too, Aioua ! When I was a kid, we’d go to IHOP sometimes (usually at dinnertime) and I’d always get Pigs in Blankets, which were as you describe.
We would (and I sometimes still do) have the hot-dogs-wrapped-in-crescent-roll dough thing for supper at home, but those weren’t called, or considered Pigs in Blankets. The first time my husband (born in Pittsburgh, raised in Florida) called them that, I was all :dubious:
shrug Maybe it’s a regional thing. I’m from St. Louis…
I see that others have used your post, Aioua, as a starting point, so I will, too. Nashville’s Pancake Pantry (which is a favorite breakfast and lunch spot for tourists and the Music Row crowd) makes them as you decribe with either maple syrup, sorghum or a compote of some sort. They also serve links as sides for other varieties of flapjacks, and one of my favorites (besides PIAB) is blintzes.
But Mama made Pigs in a Blanket that very way before I ever moved to Tennessee, so it may very well be a Southern thing. Some of these other recipes would frighten me if I ordered PIAB and got them instead.
By all that’s holy, just how in the heck does one deep fry a sandwich?
You just deep-fry the meat. When I wrote that, I actually wondered if anyone would think I meant frying the whole sandwich.
Although I am sure it could be done. Mmmmm!
Here are a couple of likely recipes:
Same here (west coast, US, if location matters). Except the syrup would be on the side.
If I asked for “pigs in a blanket” and got some kind of not-breakfast food, I’d be shocked.
Rifled or Smooth-bore…?
If your friend is going to Indiana, what you need are straight-up grilled bratwursts. Add crinkle-cut potato chips and a “relish tray” (carrots, celery, radishes, cubed yellow cheese, and green olives, with onion dip) and you’re on your way to an authentic experience.