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.”
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I just love getting new positive quotes so thank you in advance!
Love my fresh tomatoes on bologna with cheese and Miricle whip. We also often had balogna gravy on toast…Soooooooo good. I still fix both…and often..
Anyone else ever have “dashboard grillies”? We would vacation in the summer in our not air conditoned car, Mama would make cheese sandwiches, wrap them in “tin foil” and put them on the dash board. When we would pull over at the roadside parks for lunch, the cheese was nice and melted…mmm good! Perfect picnic food…saw a lot of the USA in our Chevrolet in the early 60’s eating dashboard grillies!!!
My momma used to make us Vidalia onion sandwiches with mustard as we drove on long trips. Then there were always the pb, butter & honey sandwiches for breakfast on these trips. I loved pb & potato chip sandwiches, but we couldn’t have them on trips because we’d drink too much koolaide and have to stop too often for bathroom breaks. My dad was in the Air Force, so we traveled a lot between FL & GA. This was back in the ’50’s, so think about driving all day in the summer on those trips without air conditioning…oh my, I sure don’t miss that.
I’m a Yankee intruder, here. But I was raised right- fried bologna was a staple in our Illinois home. As was “Fried Okree” (as my Ky relatives called it) and even pimento cheese!
My favorite southern sandwiches are:
1. Fried bologna (Carolina Packers…yes, I’m from NC) with mustard spread on bread. (And I like my fried bologna crispy!)
2. Fried SPAM sandwich with mustard. (Again, I like it crispy!)
3. Bologna or ham, with mayo, and potato chips. (I like to press my sandwich down to hold chips in too!)
4. Grilled cheese
5. Peanut butter and banana (mash banana in PB).
6. And how could I forget tomato, mayo lots of mayo), and salt & pepper!
I think I’ll go out tomorrow and buy a can of SPAM and pack of Bologna!
My pappaw owned a little country store when I was growing up. I can distinctly remember thick sliced “baloney” on a fresh white bread, with a big ol’ slice of a warm garden tomato and a little bit of mustard (ok, I was the ONLY person in my family who ate mustard instead of Hellman’s or Miracle Whip)!! Yummmmmmmmy!! Add a bag of Grippos–BBQ flavor of course–and a bottle of coke with a pack of peanuts poured in and I was in heaven. : )
Great post, I love hearing others think back with such fondness!! I hope and pray, I can do give my children that too 🙂 We also had fried bologna when I was a kid, put a couple of slits around the outside and make an x in the center!! I forgot how much we loved them, and I think bologna was the first think I was allowed to cook.
Another yummy sandwich my mama used to make for us, was cream cheese and chopped black olive mixed together and spread on white bread. She would also mix pb and jelly together and spread it on bread or graham crackers for a snack. My dad would make wonderful fried egg sandwichs with cheese and mayonaise, always a great breakfast. My dad also loved pb and banana sandwiches, or pb and maple syrup on toast or biscuts, he used to say he could live off of sandwiches 🙂