"It's the big one, Elizabeth! I'm coming"

I love southern cuisine and have been happily exposed to many delectables since I moved here three years ago. I love grits and biscuits with homemade jam and peach cobbler and collard greens and chicken casserole. But there is a love affair here with fried food that continues to escape me. A southerner will fry anything. I have blogged before about fried pickles, fried apple pie, fried pork skins, fried hot dogs, and fried oreos. But hold onto your hat, Ethel, now there's fried butter!

Photo: Kevin Brown / State Fair of Texas

To be unveiled at the Texas State Fair later this month, the inventor of fried butter explained, "To make fried butter, the butter itself needs to have an outer coating, or shell, if you will — something that can withstand the bubbling cauldron of the deep fryer. “I mean, butter by itself does not taste good,” Gonzales said. “Nobody just grabs a stick of butter and eats it. That would be gross.”

Indeed.