Beer-Battered Chicken-Fried Cheese Brats

Inspired by the recent visit of the Mid-South Fair and by news from the State Fair of Texas, DW has been dying to create the next generation of Fair food. You know – deep-fried Twinkies, deep-fried Snickers, deep-fried Oreos, etc. – Fair food. We decided to go the savory route instead and, yesterday, tested an idea.

I can't really provide a recipe because I was just winging it. We added some things along the way and tried a few different techniques. In the end for the batter, we used self-rising flour, beer, 1 egg, paprika, garlic powder, tabasco, salt and pepper. Then we took a Johnsonville "Beddar with Cheddar," patted it dry, rolled it in flour, dunked it in the batter and fried it in vegetable oil for about 5 minutes. Coating the battered brat in bread crumbs didn't really add anything. Add a stick and some mustard and you got yourself a Beer-Battered Chicken-Fried Cheese Brat.

The experiment worked fairly well. I can't say that it tasted great, but it did taste like Fair food. Our next step is to find a way to incorporate bacon. Ideally, I'd like to wrap the thing in bacon before battering, but I can't imagine that working. Perhaps we'll add bacon bits to the batter.