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! So many memories… when my father was laid off from his job, my parents struggled to put food on the table every night. I remember my mom making fried bologna, refried beans, and flour tortillas for dinner pretty regularly. Sometimes it was fried wieners. She fried the bologna in butter, yum! Sometimes we had it for breakfast on buttered toast. I still eat that today, and my kids love it just as much as I did growing up! Thanks for the memories, Christy!
Brace yourselves: I never even heard of frying bologna until I was an old married woman with three kids! But I’m not from the South — that’s my excuse & I’m sticking to it!
My favorite sandwich — the one my mom made every single day until I graduated from high school — was peanut butter & american cheese on Jewish rye bread, sliced in thirds. Don’t ask me why Mom sliced it in thirds — maybe she was just being fancy! Oh, and every single sandwich she made started with bread and margarine. Always. I still do that on meat sandwiches or anything with tomatoes — the fat acts as a barrier to keep things from making the bread soggy — but I use butter now.
Anyone ever tried bologna & sweet peppers??? Really good.
Take thick sliced bologna, a whole sweet pepper, cut in half, seeded, share other piece with partner, mash it down to fit on the oat bread, sooo good! Don’t need nothing else.
There were 6 of us growing up. On occasion, my dad would visit a deli and they would slice the cold cuts which were all wrapped in white butcher paper.
We had to have bologna, ham, liverwurst, roast beef (for my mom, turkey, Swiss (again for my mom), yellow American cheese slices, fresh white (wonder) bread, Hellmans mayo, onion slices, fresh tomato slices, and frenchs yellow mustard. Once in a while, we would get fresh french or Italian bread.
Each person got to make their own sandwich out of whatever they wanted-in any combination. Potato chips were on the side. We all ate at least 2 sandwiches each (my brothers ate 3 a piece). The kids would drink water, mom diet coke, dad water.
So, I guess any kind of sandwich is what I grew up with. Plain, fancy, lots of filling, little filling. Fried bologna with fried onions, the combinations were endless.
thanks for the trip down memory lane
oh christy the sandwhich looks soo yummy as a child i always had fried bologona and cheese sandwhich with a slice of tomato ohhh my goodness soo good ,thanks for sharing such wonderful memories with everyone ,i feel as though im a part of your family 🙂 Priscilla
I haven’t had fried bologna in years. We ate it plain though, on white bread, of course. Yum!
You can get a thick fried bologna sandwich at Dollywood. They also have BLT sandwiches that are the bomb.
I love homemade pimento cheese and peanut butter on rye.
peanut butter and jelly on fresh white bread oh, yum.