All hail King Corn Dog!

Fads come and go (that’s why they’re called fads; latin for fade. No? Never mind) but excellence sustains. That’s why they can come up with newer and wackier ideas about what’s good to stick in a deep fryer, but they will never, ever supplant the standard bearer… the corn dog.

It’s not known exactly who invented the corn dog or when. Wikipedia cites an article that appeared in The New Yorker magazine in 1947 that mentions “corn dog stands”, which further proves that the accomplishments of The Greatest Generation were not limited to World War II heroics. Some baked concoction called a “korn dog” dates back as far as 1929, but we’re not going to count that. Baked? Feh. It was probably downright good for you, packed with riboflavin and stuff. Who wants that?

No, when we visit the fair, we want to take a hot dog, jam a stick into it, dunk it in cornbread batter and above all else, we want it FRIED!

And that is exactly what we got when we visited George’s Fun Foods on the midway at the 2010 Florida State Fair…

Manager Jim Sheffield and his crew (Aunt Carol and Todd) were extremely accommodating in allowing us access to their kitchen. In addition to the cooking lesson, I learned that when it’s time to hit the road, Jim and his crew can get one of those stands completely clean (and I don’t know if you could tell from the video, but it really was spotless), broken down and hooked up to a truck in two hours time. But the main thing I learned is to go easy on the batter, or risk breaking your stick.