State Fair of Texas, 2026 Big Tex Choice Awards: Best Taste, Savory A taco shell is supposed to be corn or flour. Texas decided a taco shell could also be a pile of tater tots, mashed together and fried until they hold their shape. Then it filled that shell with a cheeseburger. Then it won. … Read more
Society: Thanksgiving dinner is the perfect meal. Texas: Hold my beer. Not a turkey leg. Not a side dish. The whole plate, turkey, stuffing, gravy, cranberry sauce, rolled into one ball and dropped in a fryer. It won Most Creative. It deserved it. The Invention In 2013, Fried Thanksgiving Dinner took the Most Creative award … Read more
How does this actually work? The woman who won this award still doesn’t fully know how her own recipe works. That’s not a knock on her. It’s the whole story. The Invention In 2016, Fried Jell-O took Best Taste at the Big Tex Choice Awards, the State Fair of Texas’s annual fried food competition. It … Read more
Everything is bigger in Texas. Even the butter. Not butter-flavored batter. Not a butter-based dip. Actual butter, frozen solid, wrapped in dough, and dropped straight into hot oil. It sounds like a dare. It won an award. The Invention In 2009, Abel Gonzales Jr. entered a golf-ball-sized frozen butter ball, encased in dough and deep … Read more