- Scrapple is a Pennsylvania Dutch food specialty made from leftover pork scraps and broth.
- While some consider scrapple and panhas to be the same dish, others believe that the inclusion or exclusion of organ meats differentiates the two.
His outstretched hand held a spoon of what looked like porridge. I could see the large pot simmering behind him and he and a co-worker waited expectantly for me to taste the concoction. I consider myself something of an adventurer so I didn’t hesitate, regardless of the mixture’s reputation as alove it or hate it food. It was warm, meaty and — delicious.
“Wait until it’s fully cooked, set, sliced and fried with some syrup on top,” Chip Godfrey said. “Now, you’re talking.”
As a fairly new resident to the state, I was finally introduced to the Pennsylvania Dutch specialty food called scrapple. The process to get it to this stage was as interesting as it was complex.
Godfrey owns a butcher shop, Godfrey Brothers Meats on the Susquehanna Trail between Jacobus and Loganville, and is a scrapple advocate and aficionado. He’s been making it for as long as he can remember — ever since he was old enough to help. He remembers his grandmother making it when he was a boy. She would cook down the mixture until there was no moisture remaining because that increased the shelf life. She’d put it in a crock, cover it with a sheet of paper and pour lard over the top to seal it. Before modern refrigeration was available, she would store the scrapple in a root cellar. The salt that was added to the scrapple was also a preservative.
Scrapple, also known as panhas, can be a bit controversial because of how it’s made. Panhas is a German word for a dish using every possible edible part of the pig, including cooked organs such as the liver. The dish possibly dates back to the 16th century and there was no waste left over after butchering a pig. I lived in the South for many years and the saying there was, “We used every part of the pig except the squeal.”
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To Godfrey, there is no difference between scrapple and panhas, but he prefers not to use the liver and other organ meat in his scrapple.
“I don’t like the aftertaste of liver. I think it ruins it,” he said. “Every butcher makes it different. That’s why there’s controversy over how it’s made. People will say it’s not really scrapple if you put organ meat in the recipe — it’s panhas. Some people put organ meat in, like liver. We do not.”
I arrived at the butcher shop on a cold morning and Godfrey escorted me back to the processing area — past the display case of steaks, sausages, hamburger, pork chops and other cuts awaiting an eager, buying public.
We entered a large area with tables, meat grinders and other tools of the butcher. We turned right and all I had to do was follow the steam and the heat. A large, sturdy pot was already boiling down the bones.
After slaughtering a pig, a lot of bones that still have meat attached are left over. A butcher has cut the desirable slices and cuts for the public to purchase, and the leftover bones and meat are put into a pot.
Godfrey is energetic and excitedly continued telling me everything I wanted to know about scrapple.
“When you cook the bones down, you have broth that is left over. We strain that broth to use later,” he said, pointing to the simmering pots.
When I looked inside, steam engulfed me and I saw some bones sticking up out of the water. I thought that was a weird sight but turned and tried not to think too much about it. It was hard to see much of anything else.
Once fully cooked, the steaming mass of bones and meat was transferred to a table where Godfrey and other employees picked the meat off the bones. They used sight and touch to find all the bones. They worked efficiently and, although it seemed they were throwing bones all over the place, they found their way into a bucket.
They joked and talked while they worked and soon, maybe 15 minutes or so, they were done. The result was a surprising amount of meat. Still warm, the meat was put into a grinder to be readied for the next steps.
The saved broth was put back into a pot and brought to a boil.
“We premix cornmeal and flour to a pudding-like consistency and put this into the boiling broth,” Godfrey said.
A big paddle was procured and the mixture was stirred continuously until it got thick. Some of the ground meat was put into the boiling mix and spices were added.
I anticipated this final step in the process taking several hours to complete. But, it was ready in minutes. In fact, the whole process took only a few hours. They started about 6 a.m. and were scooping out the thick scrapple and putting it into bread loaf pans by 11 a.m.
“It’s a process,” Godfrey said. “We stick to a schedule and make scrapple once a week. We save the bones all week long and freeze them until we have a big amount.”
Godfrey works with a hog farmer that raises the pigs for his butcher shop. He showed me the cooler where the pork and beef are hung waiting to be sliced into ribeyes, sirloins and chops. Traditionally, pig butchering is done in the winter so fresh scrapple is more readily available now.
“I love it. I eat it a lot. There’s a theory that it’s just a bunch of junk and it’s gross. There’s the misunderstanding that butchers put a bunch of stuff that they just want to get rid of.”
I thanked Godfrey for my scrapple education. My task was now to convince my wife to try scrapple for breakfast — no easy feat. We headed to the showroom so I could purchase the scrapple. They were sold out. My wife got a reprieve, at least until I picked some up on a return visit.
Eric Dusenbery is a documentary photographer and writer working on a book project about York County.
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