Fried Bologna & Other Southern Sandwiches
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!
My husband grew up eating fried bologna sandwiches, his family is from Louisiana. When we go to the grocery store together he always wants to get bologna so we can make fried bologna sandwiches and im like, YUCK! I didn’t grow up eatin’ bologna so it just sounds gross to me. But, I would definitely try one of your grandmas bologna sandwiches just so I could sit on the porch and listen to her talk about the old days, I bet she has some great stories to tell!
I grew up eating peanut butter and bacon sandwiches on toasted wheat bread, is that weird???
I love fried bologna sandwiches and I still eat them! I also loved fried egg sandwiches and I remember that we were so poor that for lunch a lot of times I had mayo and mustard sandwiches.
Great story, but what kind of person wouldn’t accept food thats made for them? That would be so rude! I try anything, and with a smile and gracious thank you, no matter what it is. Then if I just cant stand it (its only happened once with something called Costa Ricans nances I think) I say, that is so wonderful, but I am so full, or some other nice excuse.
As far as my favorite sandwich of all time, vidalia onions and mayo on white bread. My granny was so cheap she only sprung for bologna once in a while!
If bologna was in the house I preferred it fried with barbecue sauce.
My Dad use to take us for Sunday drives too, but we stopped for the little coke in a glass bottle and those little bags of peanuts, then you put some of the peanuts in the coke! What a treat!
Oh, peanuts in the coke! I’d forgotten about that. I remember being a little girl, at my mom’s best friend’s beauty shop (it’s a beauty shop when you’re in South Carolina, not a hair salon); Miss June would give me 5o cents for sweeping up hair, and I would buy a (glass) bottle of coke out of the drink machine, and either a honey bun or a little pack of salted peanuts. If I got peanuts, they went into the bottle of coke. Practically everybody did that. My husband (he’s from Iowa, bless his heart) thought I was plum crazy when I tried to get him to try it. I haven’t done that in years and years. I have to show my kids!!!
In addition to Fried Bologna (never understood the spelling of it…should be boloney) sandwiches, my stepdad loved Fried Spam Sandwiches…my Mom would slice em thin and fry em; slap some good yellow mustard on the white bread and Tadah!(Probably followed by a blood pressure and cholestrol pill)LOL!! Way too salty…but good!
My Mom’s favortie sandwich was cream cheese and pineapple sandwiches…soften some cream cheese, add a small can of drained crushed pineapple and you got yourself a good sandwich! Not until I was grown, did I discover this is a dip served at fancy-smancy wedding receptions…
As far as the potato chips…I am going on 49 years young and still to this day eat em on all sorts of sandwiches…especially subs and ham sandwiches…That there is some good stuff!!
Yes, we had fried bologna, banana sandwiches with mayo; love toasted pimento cheese. I lived in MI for awhile, and the pimento cheese is hard to locate in the grocery store and when you ask for it, no one knows what you are talking about.
I love toasted BLT’s, although maybe not as obscure, rarely do I hear much about those being common sandwiches to make at home.
And I can’t close without a tribute to cucumber sandwiches ~ cucumbers with mayo. Yum!
Although not in my menus, I have heard of pickle sandwiches.
Here’s to a happy palette!
I totally forgot about cucumber sandwiches. My grandmother used to make them “fancy” for us, and she’d mix half cream cheese and half mayo. I still love cucumber sandwiches, but I’m lazy, and I just spread one side of bread with cream cheese and the other with mayo.
I too grew up with fried balogna sandwiches. I in turn fed them to my kids. I only make them with three slices, half way to the center. I also like some black. I either want it fried good, or not at all. I also like cold balogna sandwiches with a big slice of raw onion. I always use mustard with balogna. Can’t imagine using mayo with balogna. My parents were both born in NM and I live in NM now. So I never thought of a fried balogna sandwich as southern fare. Although I am from southern NM. LOL
I’m from North Carolina and I grew up eating pickle and cheese sandwiches. I loved them! Had to have one every afternoon after school! I also grew up on spam sandwiches and my dad loved to eat tomato and mayo sandwiches.