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!
Everyone, thanks for the memories of great southern food. Favorite sandwich growing up was tomato and Miracle Whip (mayo was not allowed in the house). I craved it when I was pregnant with both my boys.
I’ve had the peanut butter and bacon sandwich. I was on orders with the Navy and one of the Chiefs was making it for “mid-rats”. Oh, it was soooo good, especially since we had the night watch and cook was fast asleep.
I often had fried “baloney” for breakfast when I was in high school… another favorite of my mom’s (and mine) was liver sausage (braunschweiger), also good on saltines… I guess the strangest sandwich, that I LOVED to make myself as a kid, was leftover cold spaghetti on white bread!
Sugar sandwich. I never did find out why but I think it was growing up dirt poor in Dublin Ireland in the 20’s & 30’s. A slice of bread, thin spread butter, right to the edges, and white sugar. Same stuff you put in your coffee. Fold it in half and you got a sugar sandwich.
Potato chip sandwich. Bread, butter, spread to the edges real thin, and plain potato chips. As much as you can pile on cause you deserve it. Place the top slice of bread on and squish it down flat then cut into four and place on a napkin. Good luck. lol I like to have mine with dill pickles and pop.
Mom used to put them in our lunch for school as a treat, she didn’t put a lot of chips on and they were soggy but oh boy where they good!
Peanut butter and dill pickles. Don’t laugh, we have turned a lot of our friends onto these over the yrs and they laughed till their sides hurt when we told them about them.
Fried balogna.. oh my the memories your pictures invoke. It is something I will just have to buy so I can have one now. Remember when balogna came in one big solid piece covered in wax. That was the best frying balogna ever.
My mother used to give my sister and I sandwiches made from white bread, margarine and sugar.
In Chapel Hill/Raleigh NC we ate these sandwiches: fried bologna ‘flowers’ with mustard; sliced banana with mayo; peanut butter and sliced banana; cold chopped egg salad; potted ham with chopped pickles/ toasted; grilled american cheese; and sliced garden tomatoes, mayo, with salt and pepper– all on grocery loaf white bread. Once in a while my granny would make souse meat sandwiches. When I visited my great aunt in Burlington she would fry up her favorite liver pudding slices and serve them on white bread with mustard. I loved them all!
Bologna – or “Kentucky Round Steak” as they say up North in Ohio. We loved “bologn-y” in our house. My mother would always make three slits around the bologna so it would fry flat. I make it the same way, and my kids when they were little called them flowers.
We would have fried bologna for breakfast in lieu of bacon or sausage. We would have it for lunch… My absolute favorite sandwich is with a sun ripened tomato fresh out of the garden, mayo, cheese, and a green onion!! Good eating!
My Mom would tell us that when she was little, that for special get togethers, my Grandmother, would fry up sliced bologna so it would cup up (or look like a hat!) and fill it with Spanish Rice – (rice, tomatoes, green peppers (mango), onions, hamburger, crispy bacon). I always thought that was inventive, and would look cute for a dinner – potluck.
My mom used to make egg salad sandwiches. She’d fry bacon. Then scramble eggs. Then add mayo, salt & pepper to the scrambled eggs & crumble the bacon & add it. Mix it up gently. Then spread between two slices of bread (sometimes toasted) and eat. Makes a great sandwich! So much better than boiled egg salad.