Three strange food and drink trends to try at the Maryland State Fair

I’m not here to knock a turkey leg, a funnel cake or a Maryland peach sundae. Along with the animals and rides, those perennial treats are some of the main attractions at the annual Maryland State Fair, happening now through Sept. 8 in Timonium.

But any truly great fair offers some culinary sideshows to grab visitors’ imaginations. In Texas and Iowa, it’s deep-fried butter. In Alaska, it’s reindeer hot dogs. Maryland has no shortage either, including a pulled pork “sundae” (though it’s really not as weird as it sounds: cornbread topped with pork, coleslaw and BBQ sauce). You can also find deep-fried watermelon, a Filipino/soul food fusion dish invented at MarylandChickAn, the only Black-owned restaurant in Manila, Philippines. Their slogan: “Sounds disgusting. Taste delicious!!”

Below are three fun food trends worth checking out at this year’s event.

Pickle flights

Did Travis Bishop invent the pickle flight? A few years ago, the owner of Mountaineer Meat Smokers in Martinsburg, West Virginia, began offering them at Baltimore’s own Big Dill pickle festival (which organizers claim is the largest pickle party in the world) as a way to sample three different flavors on a plate. The following year, everyone was doing it. You can try the trend yourself at Bishop’s stand near the entrance of Maryland Exhibition Hall. For $8, choose three from dozens of varieties including three different versions of Old Bay. The pickles themselves come from Peter Piper’s Pickle Palace in Pennsylvania.

Flights aren’t the only way to get your pickle fix at the fair. You can also pick up a $15 “party pack” from Ohio’s Five Star Pickles and Sausage, which sees the stand’s signature wares floating in pickle juice in a 1-quart container. You might want to keep one on hand as a hangover cure should you overindulge in this next item.

Moonshine

I can’t think of moonshine without being reminded of the Tennessean in my freshman college dorm who used to go home on the weekends and return to school in a Humvee loaded with huge glass jugs of the stuff. She was, obviously, very popular. But the high-proof liquor, also called mountain dew, hooch, white lightning and firewater, has come of age in the decades since then. The Old Line State is now home to multiple craft moonshine distillers, several of which have stands at this year’s fair.

One is Rosie Cheeks Distillery, from lawyer and third-generation moonshiner Lee Rosebush of Walkersville, near Frederick. His ancestors have been at it since the Prohibition era, but “we’ve been legal for two [years],” he said. Their peach moonshine was recently named the best on the East Coast. Distilled from Maryland corn, the beverage has a flavor like vodka but wetter, Rosebush said, with varieties ranging from 40 to 100 proof. Try it in a cocktail or straight on the rocks.

The inspiration for the company’s name will be obvious to anyone who tries it, Rosebush said: “You drink enough moonshine, you get rosy cheeks.”

The fair also features several other unique homegrown beverages, including fruit-based bottles from Pale Moonlight Wine. Founder Margaret Munro began making her adult beverages from guava as a teenager growing up in Grenada, where fruited wines are common. Try the naughtily named Sweet Pusy, made with strawberries, pawpaws and tomatoes.

Freeze-dried candy

Sometimes I like to revisit a food I thought was absolutely delicious when I was a little kid. A few things hold up: stuffed pimento olives still slap. So do chocolate top cookies. Others don’t. Have you had marshmallow fluff recently? In my youthful ignorance, I thought it was literally the crème de la crème. Nowadays, it tastes like the byproduct of a high school chemistry experiment gone wrong.

Freeze-dried candy, a treat available at the Zero Degrees booth as well the Bulk Candy Store, offers a new experience. Crunchy and with the melt-in-your-mouth feel of merengue, it reminded me of astronaut ice cream, which as a kid I also thought was incredible and basically the highlight of any visit to the National Air and Space Museum. But of course, it also tastes like candy. Choose from options such as freeze-dried Skittles, Jolly Ranchers and my personal favorite, gummy peach rings.

Your inner child will thank you.