Amish Apple Scrapple

January 2025. I agreed to let Lily photograph and digitize the journals for the university archive project, with conditions: the originals stay with me, the digital copies are for preservation and her research and not for general circulation without my consent, and she brings the camera to me rather than me sending anything to her. She accepted all three conditions without objection. The first scanning session was a Saturday in late January, Lily at my kitchen table with a flatbed scanner and a stack of notebooks, me at the counter making coffee and answering questions when she had them.

It took three hours. She was careful with the pages. At the end she said she needed one more session for the hardbound journal I was still using. I said we'd do that when it was finished.

The pipeline schedule had changed again—longer stretches on site, then longer stretches off. The off weeks I was spending almost entirely on the land, pushing forward on the projects I'd had queued for a year. I built a new outdoor cooking setup near the barn—a proper stone fire pit with a swing arm for hanging a pot, which I'd been wanting since the first Thanksgiving. It could handle a full pot of kanuchi now without the makeshift arrangement I'd been using. Good stone, good mortar, permanent.

Kai helped me build it over three weekends. By the end he was suggesting improvements. I accepted two of them and explained why I wasn't taking the third. He seemed satisfied with the ratio. He said it was better than what I'd originally described. I said he was right and he allowed himself to look briefly pleased before going back to serious.

The fire pit was barely cured before I wanted to use it for something that deserved it — not a test run, but a real meal that matched the permanence of what Kai and I had built. Scrapple is the kind of food that takes patience: you make it one day and eat it the next, sliced thick and fried until the outside is exactly right. It felt appropriate for a season of building things meant to last, and apples cut through the pork in a way that reminded me winter doesn’t have to be heavy all the way through.

Prep Time: 20 min | Cook Time: 45 min | Total Time: 5 hrs (includes chilling) | Servings: 8

Ingredients

1 lb ground pork sausage
1 medium apple, peeled, cored, and finely diced
3 cups water
1 cup cold water
1 cup yellow cornmeal
1 tsp salt
1/2 tsp black pepper
1/2 tsp dried sage
1/4 tsp ground nutmeg
2 tbsp butter or neutral oil, for frying
Maple syrup or applesauce, for serving (optional)

Instructions

Cook the sausage and apple. In a large saucepan over medium heat, brown the ground pork sausage, breaking it into fine crumbles as it cooks, about 8 minutes. Add the diced apple and cook 3 minutes more until slightly softened. Drain excess fat, leaving about 1 tbsp in the pan for flavor.
Bring water to a boil. Add 3 cups of water to the sausage mixture and bring to a gentle boil over medium-high heat. Season with salt, pepper, sage, and nutmeg.
Whisk in the cornmeal. In a small bowl, whisk together 1 cup cold water and the cornmeal until smooth. Slowly pour the cornmeal slurry into the boiling pork mixture, stirring constantly to prevent lumps.
Cook the mush. Reduce heat to low and cook, stirring frequently, for 20—25 minutes until the mixture is very thick and pulls away from the sides of the pan.
Set and chill. Pour the mixture into a lightly greased 9x5 inch loaf pan, smoothing the top. Let cool to room temperature, then cover and refrigerate for at least 4 hours or overnight until firm and fully set.
Slice and fry. Turn the scrapple out of the pan and cut into 1/2-inch slices. Melt butter in a cast iron skillet over medium-high heat. Fry slices 3—4 minutes per side until deeply golden and crisp on the outside.
Serve. Plate immediately and serve with maple syrup, applesauce, or eggs alongside.

Nutrition (per serving)

Amish Apple Scrapple — Built to Last, Like the Fire Pit We Finally Got Right