Fried Bologna & Other Southern Sandwiches
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Southern Plate is more than just me typing and chatting away. In fact, YOU are the most important part of SouthernPlate.com. With that in mind, I hope you’ll take time to leave a comment and share your favorite sandwich from your childhood. See bottom of this post for more details! Gratefully, Christy 🙂 
When my mama was a girl they had a tradition of going out riding through the countryside on Sunday afternoons. They’d stop off at a little store to have thick slices of bologna cut off and made into bologna and cheese sandwiches. Pair that with a bottled drink and they were living high on the hog! “There just wasn’t anything like getting to ride in that car and look out the window while you ate a bologna sandwich!”.
This treat was passed down to my generation when we often sat down for lunch with a big loaf of bread and a stack of cheese slices in the middle of the table while Mama fried up bologna in a skillet. We’d each make our own sandwich and I’d make mine just like my brother did: Fried bologna, cheese, and potato chips settled in between two pieces of “loaf bread”.
Bologna sandwiches, sometimes referred to as “the poor man’s steak”, are such a part of our culture, they’re even used to gauge a person’s character. On the day we got married, my husband’s best man, Jim, had driven in a ways and was planning on staying overnight before heading back. He stayed with my Grandmother, who lived across the road from what was to be our new home. It had been quite a day with the wedding and reception and that evening Grandmama and Jim went out on her porch to relax and look out over the river.
For supper, Grandmama made the two of them bologna sandwiches.
To Grandmama, Jim and my husband represented a new generation, with a huge divide between folks her age and them. Grandmama had grown up dirt poor and picking cotton all of her life and here was this young man newly graduated from college with an engineering degree whose experience with her world had been nothing more than glancing at the cotton as the car went by. Its sometimes a little intimidating for folks who come from such humble backgrounds in situations like this, but when Jim accepted that bologna sandwich, it spoke volumes to Grandmama about the type of person he was at heart. Even now whenever he is mentioned she always chimes, in,
“That Jim is just a real good boy, he sat out there on the porch and ate a bologna sandwich with me”.
To make the sandwich from my childhood you’ll need: Bread, cheese, mayo…
and potato chips 🙂
My brother taught me the wonders of a potato chip sandwich over thirty years ago.
I think it almost made up for him cutting the entire side of my hair off a few years later.
Now we have to fry out bologna. I always cut a slit halfway through to keep it from curling up into a bowl as it fries.
I prefer Zeigler bologna because it is made in Alabama. I try to buy as close to home as I can because last thing we want is to end up relying on a company halfway across the country for our food supplies. I think it’s best to support local suppliers to ensure that you have local suppliers. Zeigler’s has been around for over seventy five years. Their main plant is in Tuscaloosa and our own highly respected Coach Paul “Bear” Bryant was once an owner of the company as well.
Reminder to all: I am not into football but Alabamians take their football very seriously.
So whatever team you are for, GO THEM!
You don’t need to spray your pan or anything, just put your bologna in it and cook it on medium, turning after it browns on one side. Some folks like there is just barely heated but I actually like a wee bit of black on mine 🙂
Note to myself: You use the word “actually” too much, stop it. Now. Seriously.
~sighs~
Oh lawd, that’s some good eatin’!
I always smoosh it a bit to crunch the chips down some 🙂
Grandmama, I’m a real good girl because I still eat bologna sandwiches!
A few posts back we got into a comment discussion on strange sandwich combinations we grew up on. It was a fascinating comment section and we all really got a hoot out of reading it. I’d like to devote this comment section to those sandwiches. What did you grow up on? What brands do you insist on and why?
Mayonaise sandwich? Mustard sandwich? PB and banana? Tell us all about it! Also, why do you think Southerners eat such strange sandwich combinations-ketchup sandwich, anyone?
I think it is due to lack of food. When food was scarce, you could put something between two slices of bread, call it a sandwich and then it suddenly seemed like a meal. What do you think?
If there is anything else you wanna talk about in the comments section, feel free to do that, too.
See someone else’s comment you wanna reply to? Go right ahead!
I consider this to be my big old porch and we’re all just a standing around visiting with each other.
Y’all keep the conversation going and I’ll keep the tea glasses filled!
We’re all family here anyways. 🙂
“The happiest of people don’t necessarily have the best of everything; they just make the most of everything that comes along their way.”
Submitted by Rebecca Hall. To submit your quote or read more, please click here.
I just love getting new positive quotes so thank you in advance!
Fried bologna with A-1 sauce. MMMmmm. (I used to eat it that way when I was a kid, too.) Though now it’s just fine with mustard, no cheese, and yes, potato chips. 🙂
Condiment sandwiches are good. LOL! Mustard, ketchup, even relish sandwiches, sometimes mixed with any of the above. And yes, I’ve been known to have a potato chip sandwich with Miracle Whip. (Especially good with kettle cooked potato chips, or even ridged ones.)
I’m grown up and now I can eat what I want! 🙂
Diane in PA
Growing up I loved (and still do)my Mom’s ham sandwiches. I loved them with lettuce, tomato, salt and pepper. Nothing fancy. But the sandwich just reminds me of home.
Today, as a Mom of 3, the best sandwiches in the whole world are the ones I don’t have to make. I love days when I travel for work and get to eat in the cafeteria and have someone else make me a sandwich!
Tracie
My childhood sandwhich that I’ve always loved is a BLT, (bacon lettus and tomato) It’s not a strange sandwhich, but I always got excited at dinner time when my folks decided to make these. I was an easy child to please! ^_^ I don’t like bologna, but I kinda do this same sandwhich with SPAM. I love my SPAM to where it’s just about black, and crispy on the edges! YUM….thanks for the post and keep up the good work!
God Bless!
Your friend from Louisiana,
Vickie
We would usually just eat our bologna sandwiches with cold bologna, and tomatoes, lettuce, pickles, etc. But it does look really good with the bologna fried up like that!
When I was younger, we would put slices of cheese on our peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. I haven’t done that in years, but we used to love it.
Egg sandwiches were also something we would do – fried eggs with a nice gooey yolk, sandwiched between two pieces of buttered toast. You’d bite in and the yolk would drip down your chin and get all over the place – sandwich heaven!
Oh lord- I had o respond to this one….
*My best friend of 43 years,Rhonda, eats “white bread slathered with Peanut-butter and liberally sprinkled with white sugar” sammiches.
All these years, I still haven’t got the guts to try them….it just sounds WRONG!!!
*My Brother used to come in from work in the mill, get a half loaf of white bread out, mix up some ketchup and Mayo with sweet pickled relish in a bowl and make sammiches out of that. UGH!
*My very favorite sammich is my grandmothers Cucumber & Carrot sammiches where the cucumbers and carrots are FINELY grated, then the excess liquid squeezed out then, either mayo or cream cheese and some spice or another are added and then spread on white braed with the crusts cut off. They were always a HIT at all the family bridal and baby showers. Unfortunately, my grandmother has 10 15 years passed and the RECIPE for it has been misplaced during one of my moves so I haven’t had one in AGES!
That should have read 10 to 15 years passed……I miss her so much.
The PB and Sugar sounds great, and the ketchup, mayo, and relish sounds just yummy.
Your Cuke and Carrot sammich sounds terrible though…..
Oh no- but it wasn’t exactly a hardy meal tho! It was more of a light snack sammich!! It was a tiny bit bland, but that’s what made it so good…it wasn’t overly spicy or loaded with overwhelming flavors that would upset your tummy.
Course, being a guy, you probably would choose a hardy sammich over a light snack sammich!! That’s oaky, tho….different strokes for different folks!!!
I remember eating mayonnaise sandwiches growing up when we’d run out of other stuff.
We also ate a lot of potted meat on white bread and spam with mayo. We always had Kraft mayo as far as I remember…but when I’m in GA, I have to have Blue Plate – it is the best by far!
My Daddy and my Uncle Lawton (both from NC) loved fried bologna. I prefered mine right out of the package with mayo on white bread. I lived on those sandwiches when I was pregnant. 🙂
Mama always ate banana and mayonnaise sandwiches.
One of my favorites to this day is tuna mixed with mayo and potato chips piled on between white bread. Cruncy and delicious!
I LOVE fried bologna sandwiches. I eat them with mayo,fried bologna and a slice of cheese. I have never tried it with potato chips but that sounds yummy too!! Growing up my mom would fry bologna for breakfast alot, I didn’t realize it was because we couldn’t afford much else. I still love fried bologna with fried or scrambled eggs and buttered grits.
My best friends and I would eat alot of pb sandwiches with pancake syrup. I don’t know of anyone else that eats them that way. I really like pineapple and mayo sandwiches, they are delicious. Reading all of this takes me back to my childhood.
Heather, my brother and his best friend use to eat the peanut butter and syrup sandwhiches. I tried it once, but it was waaaaaaay too sweet for me! They ate ’em all the time though!!!
My Momma used to fix Peanut Butter sandwiches with syrup for us. I had totally forgotten about that. They were so, so good.
I may be making me one of those tonight.
We eat peanut butter and honey at my house. Not too different, I guess. Like my mama before me, I’m too cheap to buy pancake syrup, so I only make it on pancake day. But, we always have honey in the house.
I have never tried PB sandwiches with pancake syrup. However, I do put my homemade pear preserves on my PB sandwiches, and I love it-way better than grape jelly. So, I can see how syrup would make a great combination on PB sandwiches.