TikTok's Deep Fried Bacon-Wrapped Cheese Is Peak American Food
American food is a tricky category to nail down with its many cultural influences and Americans' love of fast food, but the joyful heart of American food is fair food. From the 1904 World's Fair in St. Louis where so much 20th-century Americana made its debut to the Iowa State Fair where politicians compete to be photographed eating the most ridiculous deep-fried foodstuff, fairs are open to all, meaning a diverse audience and hot competition between vendors drives innovation — America in a nutshell.
The top three contenders for Best New Food at the 2023 Iowa State Fair were all deep-fried, bacon-wrapped, and cheesy, but none of them quite reached the levels of fair-food ridiculousness that TikTok star Zach Choi created with his deep-fried bacon-wrapped cheese. Not only is it oversized, overstuffed, and frankly a little intimidating — Choi even makes the entire thing in the shape of a doughnut!
The original video of his creation has over 4 million likes, as Choi leverages his culinary skills to create food that's tasty and attractive, but also for the ASMR appeal of crispy shells and oozing cheesy centers. Unfortunately, this means the deep-fried bacon-wrapped cheese isn't available at any fairs near you, but he does demonstrate exactly how to build it if you want to try it at home.
Viewers are intrigued, if not altogether sold
To make the dish, Zach Choi forms a porky torus shape that's reminiscent of Iron Man's ARC reactor from the Marvel Universe — if it were designed to stop a heart, rather than keep one going. The concoction takes a whole pack of bacon and a sky-high stack of American singles — what could be more American than that? Then Choi follows the classic formula of flour, egg, and breadcrumbs to form a layer of breading that crisps up and stops any melted cheese or bacon juices leaking out into the hot oil of the fryer.
@thezachchoi
The outside is crispy, the inside gooey, but some commenters had questions about the bacon with one commenting, "That bacon is still RAWWWWW" and others echoing their views. Rest assured that while it's impossible for bacon to crisp up beneath a layer of breading, the bacon is cooked. As long as the outer layer is well made, the fillings of fried foods aren't fried, they are gently steamed within a cocoon while the outside gets crisped up. What commenters are reacting to is the ham-like look of steam-cooked bacon, rather than the crispy rashers they're used to. While the bacon may look a little different, it's no doubt as delicious as it is artery-clogging. Deep-fried bacon-wrapped cheese, made by a rising star of new media to evoke nostalgia for fairgrounds and send tingles up the spines of millions. Peak American food.