A look at some of the fair food classics
Theme of most fair foods is indulgence. Fair food is supposed to be deep-fried or covered in powdered sugar. Here’s a look at some of the dishes you might encounter on this season’s midways.
Apple Crisp
Pat’s Apple Crisp and Cider Donuts (patsapplecrisp.com)
Find them at this fair: Hopkinton State Fair, Deerfield Fair
Danielle Calkins’ family has been selling fair food for a long time.
“My dad and my mother started this business back in 1984,” she said. “We’ve been in business over 40 years. … They just started with the fair circuits like Topfield, Deerfield, Hopkinton, Rochester. Now, we do fall festivals and things like that, but we’re also now a mobile food truck business so we do private events as well. The cider doughnuts have been part of the operation for about 18 years out of those 40. My father passed away in 2010 and so my brother and I took over the business. My mom is still involved. She’s Pat.”
In classic fair food tradition Pat’s makes two foods, makes them extremely well, and tries to keep up with demand on fair weekends. Calkins said apple crisp is, for her, the quintessential New England fair food.
“I definitely think it’s just that feeling that New Englanders have at that turn of the fall season,” she said. “When we start to feel those leaves change and it starts to get a little cooler in the air, I just feel like people, New Englanders specifically, they just crave the sweaters and the scarves. You watch people at the fair, right? People are kind of bundled up in the evenings. It’s a little chilly. They want something hot and they want something that is homemade that they know.”
Calkins said while fresh hot doughnuts sell more at fairs, apple crisp has a special place in her heart.
“Just because it’s that mixture between French vanilla and when it melts a little bit into the crisp and the apples, it’s something special. I just think that everything kind of aligns for that Deerfield Fair weekend at the end of September. The apples are at peak, peak perfection at that time, just before October hits, and it’s probably about 50 degrees outside; it’s the best.”
Calkins and her family are traditionalists. They stick with McIntosh apples from one particular local orchard for their crisp.
”It’s completely dependable and it cooks well without becoming mush,” she said.
Extremely Large Doughnuts
Betsy’s Country Fair Donuts (facebook.com/betsysdonuts)
Find them at this fair: Hopkinton State Fair, Deerfield Fair, Sandwich State Fair
Cider doughnuts might be traditional, but enormous frosted doughnuts the size of hubcaps are the indulgence of choice for many younger fair-goers. Fully mature couples might need to split one between themselves.
Jamie Cross is the owner of Betsy’s Country Fair Donuts.
“We’ve been doing jumbo doughnuts at New Hampshire State Fairs since my grandfather started it in 1965,” he said. “We are third and fourth generation at the moment.”
Cross said his stand sells five varieties of doughnut, all of which are yeasted and leavened.
“We do five different varieties of jumbo doughnuts,” he said. “We do maple-frosted, chocolate-frosted, cinnamon-sugared, regular-sugared, and honey-dipped. Chocolate-frosted are usually the most popular in Hopkinton, honey-dipped in Deerfield, and usually maple-frosted up in Sandwich.” These are big doughnuts. “Ours are 8 inches across,” he said.
The doughnuts sell too quickly to keep track of, Cross said.
“As far as actual doughnuts, we don’t actually count. We usually measure by 50-pound bags of flour is how we usually count the day. And I think the best Deerfield Fair we ever had was probably 10 50-pound bags of flour, so 500 pounds of flour in a day. A Deerfield Saturday is usually the busiest day of any of the fairs.”
To be ready for the midway, the dry ingredients for Cross’ doughnuts are mixed off-site.
“We mix dried powdered whole eggs, powdered milk, our shortenings, sugars and flavors. We’ll mix that in a batch. So we call it our base. So we have buckets of that. When we are at the fair, we only have to measure out a certain amount of base, water and yeast, and then you put the flour in until the dough feels a certain way. Then you let it rise, cut it, let it rise again, and then fry it. And then you dress them all up. They’re all the same doughnut, they’re just dressed differently.”
Cross notes that, surprisingly, frosted doughnuts are not at their best right out of the fryer.
“The perfect doughnut is like 15 minutes out of the fryer,” he advised. “They need to set a little bit. You don’t want them to be too hot when you add the toppings. … You don’t want them running all down your shirt. A lot of people are like, ‘Oh, do you have a hot honey-dipped?’ I’m like, ‘I do, and if that’s what you want, you can wear it; that’s fine.’
Gluten-Free Fair Food
No Pain, No Grain
Find them at this fair: Hillsborough County Fair, Deerfield Fair
Tenley Pello developed celiac disease as an adult, but she grew up loving fair food. According to her the most unfair thing about her situation is that she was able to develop a passion for wheaty, starchy foods before her body decided she couldn’t eat them.
“So I went from knowing how good fair food is to not being able to eat it,” she said. After some consideration, she realized that that feeling of injustice was also an opportunity.
“The way I kind of look at it,” she said, “is when I go to a fair I don’t want a smoothie, I don’t want to go and get a rice bowl, I don’t want a healthy option, I want typical fair junk food — and I couldn’t eat that anymore. So I wanted to kind of bring back enjoyable fair food to people who don’t really have options. Because even when you go to places that have gluten-free foods, there can still be cross-contamination; they might use the same fryer for everything, or forget to wipe a counter down.”
The thing to keep in mind, Pello said, is that “gluten-free” does not mean “healthy.” The whole principle of fair food, she said, is to be able to provide greasy, carby, indulgent food.
“Every event we work at, we sell something different,” she said. “Our fried dough definitely took us a couple of attempts to get right. We finally found a recipe that we really, really like and we settled on. A lot of people tell us that they’ve missed it, that they haven’t been able to have fried dough since they were kids.”
Pello said anything she fries is popular on the fairgrounds.
“Our Fry Bowls [huge servings of loaded french fries] seem to sell the most,” she said, “but our chicken tenders are really great …” Most of the dishes on the No Pain menu at any given event are built on a foundation of French fries. A Chicken Parm Bowl, for instance, starts with garlic-parmesan fries, topped with chicken tender bites, marinara sauce, and more parmesan cheese. Other bowls might be topped with pulled pork, Buffalo chicken, or a classic fair combination of grilled sausage, peppers, and onions. Pello said that she is particularly proud of the chicken tenders she has been able to source, which find their way into more than half of her inventions. “We’ve managed to find a distributor who can get us the best of the best,” she said. They are incredibly high-quality, and they’re halal. It is definitely a comfort food.”
Maple Cotton Candy
Ben’s Sugar Shack (bensmaplesyrup.com)
There is probably no fair food more iconic than cotton candy.
The New Hampshire twist on cotton candy is to make it out of maple sugar. Ben Fisk is the owner of Ben’s Sugar Shack.
“I’ve been making maple cotton candy at the fair since I was 15 years old,” he said. “It’s just a pure maple flavor.”
The way a cotton candy machine works, Fisk said, is that it melts sugar and spins it very quickly.
“There are heating elements in there and it just melts the sugar out there and spins it out. [The sugar] comes out into the air as a liquid and when it hits the cooler air is when it turns into the sugar fibers.” In Fisk’s experience, it’s children who like traditional bright colors. “But definitely, more adults eat the maple cotton candy,” he said. Because, in the end, maple cotton candy has such a pure maple flavor, the maple sugar can come from many different batches of syrup. “It varies, it can be dark,” he said, “but usually a dark to amber rich syrup is really good for making maple sugar.”
Smoked Turkey Legs
Michael Raffalo has seen smoked turkey legs evolve as a fair food staple over the years.
“I started doing turkey legs [at fairs] around 1996,” he remembered. They seem to have started as a niche food at renaissance fairs, and took a while to develop a following. “They weren’t popular in the beginning as they are now at a fair, but I believe most fair foods that are popping off are because of the food channels, you know, Carnival Eats, several shows like that on TV. Sausage has been a staple since before I was born. Popcorn, cotton candy, that type of thing, fried dough. But now, with these shows, people are frying everything — this and that. But the turkey legs have come around, and I’ve stayed with it through all these years.”
Raffalo and his family live in Florida but work the fair circuit throughout the summer and fall. The Deerfield Fair is an important event on his family’s calendar.
“Deerfield’s a big staple,” he said, “and it’s a family affair. This year I believe is our 60th year at that fair. It’s now turned over to my son. I’m still here a little bit to help along, but the next generation is coming along now. He’s the fourth generation on his mother’s side; it’s the same business, but he’s third generation on his father’s side. He’s a good boy.”
The turkey legs themselves are straightforward, Raffalo said.
“They are turkey. It’s just smoking and it’s an easy preparation. That’s the one good thing about them. You don’t need bread, you don’t need peppers, onions, all that. It’s just boom, here’s your meat. It’s meat on a stick.We’re into smokers, we’re into picking up wood, making sure it’s the right wood. You can just use oak, it’s fine, but if you want a little sweeter taste to the leg — I mean, it’s just like a barbecue process.”
Raffalo said that while many turkey leg vendors fry their turkey legs he and his family are committed to cooking theirs in a smoker, which requires organization and planning.
“If we were in a hurry we could get a batch out quickly in three hours for production,” he said, “But we let them go a little longer if we have time.”
A turkey leg is bigger than most first-timers expect, Raffalo said.
“They roughly range from 18 ounces to 36 ounces. Some of the legs in a box are twice the size of others, but they are all no less than 18 ounces. If you’re going to call it ‘jumbo,’ we want it to be 18 ounces or more. [A turkey leg] is a walk-around-with-a-hunk-of-meat-in-your-hand meal in itself. It’s just a big old hunk of meat and deliciousness. The flavor’s simple — simple smoke. [Customers] love it.’
Deep-Fried Oreos
Brothers Concessions
Find them at this fair: Hopkinton State Fair, Deerfield Fair
If New England fair food has a specialty, it’s almost anything deep-fried. Fried dough springs to mind immediately, of course, and then there are french fries, cottage fries, curly fries, spiral fries, corn dogs, fried clams, even fried ice cream. But the quintessential decadent fried fair food has to be the fried Oreo.
Matt Reed is one of the owners of Brothers Concessions, which specializes in fried foods.
“Fried Oreos started in about 2002,” he remembered. “I think we started doing fried Oreos in 2003. My brother and I started as soon as I got out of high school. We started with fried Twinkies, fried candy bars and funnel cakes. And then the following year we added a couple other items, but an Oreo was the biggest one that we added. It’s been one of the long-term stays that we’ve had.”
Reed said that timing is everything when it comes to eating a fried Oreo.
“You really need to let them cool a little bit,” he advised. “You’ll burn your tongue if you don’t, but they are best fresh. If you let them sit and kind of sit for too long — half an hour or so — they’ll go stale. I do know several people who have told me that they were taking them home and reheating them in the oven, but for the most part hot and fresh is the way to go.”\
The secret to a good fried Oreo is to not cheap out, Reed said.
“When we first started doing it, when we were getting our original trailer ready, we had neighborhood kids come over to try out different things. And we had done Oreos, just regular … Oreos. And then we tried Double Stuf Oreos and they were so much better! Like so much better that we’ve always used Double Stuf Oreos for probably 23 years now. And I’ve never seen any other vendors do that. … The filling in an Oreo will kind of melt into the batter a little bit, so more is better.”
“With a Twinkie,” Reed continued, “the way we do it, it’s actually got a cool taste in the middle, but the outside is nice and warm. It’s kind of like a baked Alaska type of sensation. We do fried ice cream as well.” That has to be very cold when it goes into the hot oil, he said. The concept is to have different flavors, textures and temperatures in the same treat.
Reed has seen a growing acceptance of decadent fried fair food.
“When we first started doing it, it tended to be something for a young adult crowd,” he said. “But, you know, now, I have grandparents buying fried Oreos, fried cookies, fried candy bars. Early on, parents were not as excited about serving their kids fried desserts, but over time they’ve become more of a standard fair food. They’re everywhere now.”
Three upcoming fairs
Hopkinton State Fair
Fairgrounds, 392 Kearsarge Ave., Contoocook
Dates: Thursday, Aug. 28, through Monday, Sept. 1
Hours: Thursday 5 to 10 p.m., Friday, Saturday, and Sunday 8 a.m. to 11 p.m., and Monday 8 a.m. to 5 p.m.
There will be livestock shows, a demolition derby, carnival rides, monster trucks, live entertainment, a farmers market, and a petting zoo. Expect stunt riders, horse-pulls and, of course, fair food. Visit hsfair.org.
Hillsborough County Fair
New Boston 4-H Youth Center, 15 Hilldale Lane, New Boston
Dates: Friday, Sept. 5, through Sunday, Sept. 7
Hours: Friday noon to 9 p.m., Saturday 9 a.m. to 10 p.m., and Sunday 9 a.m. to 6 p.m.
Expect livestock showing, ox-pulls, carnival rides, tractor-pulls, sheep-herding demonstrations, live music, fireworks and fair food. Visit hcafair.org.
Deerfield Fair
Deerfield Fair Grounds, 34 Stage Road, Deerfield
Dates: Thursday, Sept. 25, through Sunday, Sept. 28
Hours: Thursday, Friday and Saturday 8 a.m. to 10 p.m., Sunday 8 a.m. to 7 p.m.
Billing itself as “New England’s Oldest Family Fair,” the Deerfield Fair is a lot to take in. Expect horse and cattle pulls, a pig scramble, giant pumpkins, circus performers, live music, horticultural and dairy judging, sheep sheering, rides, dog shows, a women’s Fry Pan Toss, and, of course, an almost overwhelming amount of fair food. Visit deerfieldfair.com.
Featured Image: Apple crisp from Pat’s. Photo courtesy Danielle Calkins.