Without the stomach-turning pieces of pig piled into one of the region’s favorite foods, entrepreneurs Daniel and Svetlana Zantzinger, who are based out of West Chester’s Artisan Exchange, have liberated scrapple’s delicious side.
And eliminated its disgusting side.
In fact, their Russian Pepper USA Vegan Scrapple has begun outselling the original, according to a Good Food feature by Heather Corcoran.
“We picked something low on the food chain — basically it’s lower than hot dogs,” Daniel said, “and we elevate it to gourmet.”
How? By focusing on the herbs and spices that really give scrapple its widespread appeal.
“People use the term ‘meat’ with scrapple, but I say ‘porcine-based’ because there’s not a lot of actual meat in it,” Daniel said. “It’s animal byproduct — snout and tail and entrails and esophagus and that kind of stuff — so what they did to make that nastiness palatable was put in corn and buckwheat and salt and pepper and a constellation of herbs and spices, and they blended it up so you didn’t see the esophagus.
“You’re almost halfway there with the vegan aspect, because you’re already camouflaging something.”
Read more of the story behind Russian Pepper USA’s vegan scrapple phenomenon from Good Food here.
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