In a world where you could probably deep fry your leftover deep fryer oil and sell a batch of it for 4 dollars at a carnival, it should come to no surprise that deep fried Kool-Aid is all the rage at the San Diego County Fair.
“Chicken” Charlie Boghosian creates the delicacy and sells donut-hole sized balls of them in batches of five. He sold 400 to 600 orders a day, tallying over 9,000 deep fried Kool-Aid balls.
I know everyone is freaking out over these because they either really really want to try one or because they see it as another notch on America’s obesity epidemic, but this doesn’t sound much different than a donut to me. It’s all the same, mixing obnoxious amounts of sugar with flour and dumping it into a vat of boiling oil. Mmmmm, heart disease!
Isn’t that what carnivals and fairs are for, anyway? I rarely remember anything past walking through the gates as a kid, high-tailing it to the funnel cake and lemonade stand, taking 3 rides on the mini rollercoaster because the carney high-fived me whenever I came back through the line, then racing to the port-o-john to toss the treats back up and pass out in a sugar coma on a picnic table.
That’s just what happens when you go to carnivals in the United States, and as long as there are guys named “Chicken Charlie†in charge of the concession stands, it’s probably not going to change.
For someone like me who grew out of the fried food stage and is convinced she will suffer a stroke the second a fried anything touches her mouth, our culture’s obsession with fried foods is pretty alarming, especially the fact that people are throwing down five deep fried Kool-Aid balls in a row. However, until Grandma starts whipping these up in her kitchen as an after school snack, I think a little carnival indulgence is OK… until you’re the person plowing through three baskets.
Would you try deep fried Kool-Aid?
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