Allentown Fair Scrapple Eating Contest Brings Out the Pig in Participants (2024)

ALLENTOWN, Pa. – “Any ‘upchucking’ will result in disqualification.”

So read Rule No. 4 for the inaugural Scrapple Eating Contest at the Great Allentown Fair, Saturday, August 31, sponsored by Stoltzfus Meats.

Scrapple, aka pannhaas, is traditional Pennsylvania Dutch fare consisting of a fried mush of pork scraps and trimmings combined with cornmeal and flour.

“They take everything that’s left from a pig and they grind it up, and pretty much that’s what scrapple is,” contestant Paul Druckenmiller of Northampton said while enjoying the fair with his wife before the big chow down.

“I’m Pennsylvania Dutch, and one of the beliefs of Pennsylvania Dutch is they don’t waste any part of the pig. So, there’s a use for every part of it. That’s how scrapple came about.”

Allentown Fair Chair/CEO Beverly Gruber said the idea for the challenge was borrowed from the Ephrata Fair, which held it’s first scrapple eating contest last year.

As far as rule No. 4 went, she said before the first bell rang, she wasn’t too concerned.

“At Ephrata, nobody threw up, and they had a lot more candidates,” Gruber said. “We only accepted 25 people, but we had 42 applicants.”

The Allentown Fairgrounds Farmers Market, an indoor venue open year-round, hosts 65 vendors including Stoltzfus Amish Deli, part of Intercourse, Pa.-based Stoltzfus Meats, which sponsored the Ephrata contest.

The emcee for the event was Zachary Stoltzfus, whose grandfather founded the business 70 years ago.

“We sell to different restaurants and different businesses all throughout the mid-Atlantic region,” said Stoltzfus, the company’s online sales manager, who has literally been part of the family business his whole life.

While Stoltzfus tells the story on the company’s website about how “The meat cutters used to give me cow eyeballs as I walked through the shop in my bare feet on hot summer days,” there are no ocular occurrences, or anything else too weird, in the family recipe.

Stoltzfus, who holds a doctorate in modern European history, conceded that scrapple – traditionally made of hog offal such as the head, heart, liver and other trimmings – is not for everyone.

“It can be a bit of a, what’s the word, divisive breakfast meat,” Stoltzfus said as he methodically sliced the hardened mixture into roughly ¼-inch slabs. “Polarizing might be another word.”

Personally, he said, he loves the stuff.

“Part of the reason why is I’ve seen our scrapple made,” Stoltzfus said. “I know that it’s only quality ingredients in there. And our scrapple in terms of taste, in terms of texture, I know I’m obviously biased, but I think it’s the best scrapple around. It’s not just a bunch of scraps with a bunch of spices to cover up the inferiority of the ingredients.”

The Stoltzfus recipe includes actual pork cuts, skins and livers, the latter two ingredients being the only that would be considered offal.

“That’s what gives it its crisp when it fries is the skins,” Stoltzfus said.

And since Stoltzfus Meats uses cornmeal and buckwheat flour (buckwheat is a harvested seed and not a grain) as binding agents,its scrapple is gluten-free.

“And it’s not overspiced,” Stoltzfus said.

Down Not Up

The contest took place is four heats, with a mix of participant sizes and genders.

“Each contestant has two minutes to eat as much scrapple as they can,” Stoltzfus said, addressing the well-filled bleachers and seats.

“If at any point they decide they can’t eat any more and, you know, avail themselves of the buckets behind them, they are disqualified. That has never happened, hopefully it never will. I have a feeling we have some real professionals participating today.”

At the end of the day, an unassuming man of slight build (compared to some competitors) from Telford shoveled in and kept down 2.57 pounds of scrapple, breaking away from the closest two rivals by more than ¾ of a pound.

To what did he attribute his gluttony for punishment?

“Just keep practicing, eat more, and keep perfecting your skills,” said winner Josh Kraty, who had gobbled down pizza, hotdogs, tacos and more in similar contests, but never scrapple.

“The hardest thing with this was the heat, the heat of the second and third plate,” said Kraty, known across multiple social media platforms as “Josh: The Goat.”

“You got the first one, they let it cool, but the second and third one came out and you just had to gut right into it. And I actually burnt my finger, it was that hot.”

Not everyone was ripping right in. Allentown Mayor MattTuerk looked more like he was leisurely relishing Saturday breakfast than participating in a heated contest.

He was in it for the guts, not the glory.

“I was enjoying it,” Tuerk said. “Nicole (Sellitti) did such a phenomenal job cooking the scrapple, I thought I would just take some time to enjoy it.”

“I tried everything: I tried the Karo syrup and the ketchup,” the mayor said of the myriad condiments offered contestants. “But the apple butter ...”

“... The apple butter is my favorite,” offered Sellitti, a cook at the Ritz Barbecue, also located at the fairgrounds.

“I got asked to cook — I’m excited,” Sellitti, new to volunteering at the fair, said earlier in the day before firing up the grill to fry up 50 pounds of scrapple.