These Are 2022's Best State Fair Foods

In case anyone was wondering whether Alaska has a state fair, yes, they certainly do, complete with monster trucks, a demolition derby, a rodeo, and various musical acts popular in the '90s — just like any fair in the lower 48. Their fair also has food out the wazoo, a diverse lineup including Dutch, Russian, Filipino, Mexican, Thai, and Brazilian dishes, as well as home-grown Alaskan specialties such as salmon, halibut, and sourdough.

The Alaska State Fair has four new vendors this year. One is offering barbecue, one has corn on the cob, one's selling "Alaskannolis" (which are just like cannolis, except you eat them in Alaska), and one specializes in sandwiches.

The Hungry Deckhand, offering what they describe as "Massive Sandwiches for Monster Appetites," wins our vote for the best new Alaska State Fair food. Their sandwiches all come on sourdough bread — "sourdough," as it happens, is a local term for someone who's lived in The Last Frontier for a few years. Fillings include pulled pork barbecue, turkey with pesto, and the ever-popular BLAT (bacon, lettuce, tomato, and avocado), but our favorite is their signature sandwich: a gourmet cheese steak with peppers, mushrooms, garlic aioli, caramelized onion jam, and two kinds of cheese (provolone and gruyere). Fancy, yet very big and beefy, befitting a sandwich from the state that's bigger than Texas.

The Florida State Fair, as we mentioned earlier, takes place in the winter, so 2022's fair wrapped up in February. Still, the best new fair foods tend to come back for an encore the following year, and by the year after that, they become a well-established tradition. So what future Florida State Fair staples were introduced in 2022? They, too, had a fancied-up cinnamon roll, theirs topped with cinnamon apple pie filling and caramel sauce. Fair-going Floridians could also enjoy a caramel apple covered with chunks of bacon; cider meant to taste like a candy apple; a pizza with Big Mac-inspired toppings; fruit smoothies topped with Pop Rocks; and the now-ubiquitous sweet/savory combination — this one was a hot dog inside a Long John donut, sprinkled with bacon and glazed in powdered sugar.

Our favorite of Florida's new offerings, however, was something that at first glance might seem to be a similar mashup. The funnel cake taco actually came down pretty definitively on the side of savory rather than sweet. It was made from a taco shell dipped in funnel cake batter flavored with Buffalo sauce, then deep-fried as per best state fair practice. The taco was then filled with buffalo chicken dip, lettuce, cheese, ranch dressing (blue cheese would have been better; just saying), and crumbled Doritos, with not a single crumbled cookie or frosting drizzle in sight. That's what we're talking about!

The Indiana State Fair, which runs five days a week for nearly a month, is all about promoting its "deliciously wacky new food & beverage items." Some of them really aren't all that wacky, although they do sound quite appetizing: a milkshake made with Thin Mints, a walking taco topped with Cheetos (Flamin' Hot, of course), and pulled pork baked potatoes. Others are a little more off the wall: pickle pizza, an ice cream parfait with boba balls and gummy bears, and that Midwestern favorite, a giant Bloody Mary topped with sliders, pickles, bacon, and everything else that fits on a swizzle stick. (Isn't eating about 95% of the reason to attend any such festival?)

Our absolute favorite is a hilarious take on charcuterie, a popular 2020 food fad that has perhaps been growing a bit stale of late. There's nothing pretentious about the Indiana State Fair's take on this trend, though: cotton candy, salt water taffy, popcorn (plain and caramel), tiny funnel cakes, and miniature corn dogs, all attractively plated on the finest serviettes en papier. As the fair is still going on as we write this, a winner has yet to be chosen in the fan-favorite food competition, but State Fair Charcuterie would get our vote for sure.

The Kansas State Fair boasts 100-plus food vendors and it freely admits to being all about deep-fried everything on a stick as well as "legendary favorites and items that are just plain wacky." Its website lists just three new items, although it teases that there will be many more available at the fair. Of the three new items it does mention, just one is deep-fried –- the cheesecake bites — although the website doesn't disclose whether or not skewers are involved.

We begrudgingly award a tie finish to the other two items, although we're not anxious to try either one. The first is the Krispy Kreme hot dog, wrapped in bacon and served on a jelly donut (not one from the more regionally-appropriate LaMar's, for shame). These really aren't new, as it appears the fair also offered Krispy Kreme dogs in 2019. The second winner is a burger encased in a honey bun –- as an upgrade, you can even get it with chocolate-covered bacon. Nice, but we think we'll save our appetites for the fair's tried-and-true favorites like apple dumplings or beefy bacon-wrapped Moink Balls ("moink" is a combination of "moo" and "oink").

Minnesota is often stereotyped as a state full of tall, blond people who say "uff da" a lot, but in the 21st century, it is home to a very diverse population. Held in the Twin Cities area, the state fair does its best to reflect that, particularly in its concessions. New items for 2022 range from West Indian jerk chicken pizza to Greek tirokroketes (fried cheese balls), from Norwegian-style waffles to South American arepas, while their take on the ever-popular pastry burger comes on a Mexican-style concha. Our favorite foods, however, are the ones from Union Hmong Kitchen.

The Hmong community in Minnesota received some long-overdue recognition when gymnast Suni Lee won a gold medal at the 2020/21 Olympics, but its cuisine, which has roots in both Laos and Thailand, is still largely unknown outside the Upper Midwest. Yia Vang, a James Beard nominee who'll star in a new version of "Iron Chef," has been doing his best to change all that. His popular pop-up Union Hmong Kitchen will offer its take on the ever-popular food-on-sticks genre at the Minnesota Fair. On the menu is "mov + nquaij": "mov" is rice (the purple sticky kind) and "nquaij" is meat (your choice of chicken thigh, marinated tofu, or Hmong sausage). Dipping sauces include lemongrass shallot and chili-garlic oil, and for a beverage that pairs perfectly with these creations, Union Hmong is also serving a coconut lychee colada.

While the Oklahoma State Fair website helpfully provides a list of vendors offering new foods for 2022, they don't mention what these foods happen to be. What's more, cross-checking coverage of the 2021 fair shows that many of the vendors themselves are not new to the fair — Gilty Pleasures was serving up pulled pork mac and cheese last year, while the Funky Flamingo provided gelato/stroopwafel dessert nachos. One vendor on the new foods list, however, seems not to have appeared at the 2021 fair and, even better, makes no secret of its specialty. Therefore, even though the Original Minneapple Pie is obviously not native to Oklahoma, it nevertheless gets our nod for the best (okay, only) food at the Oklahoma State Fair that we can reasonably assume to be new for 2022.

The Original Minneapple Pie is a vendor based out of Minneapolis, as you'd expect, and its fried pies were originally sold at venues in that area. It has branched out over the past decade or so, and now appears at fairs and other events as far away as North Carolina and Texas. Its signature dish is a fried apple pie served à la mode, with a choice of vanilla or cinnamon ice cream, although the menu now features a Minnepumpkin pie as well. Non-Oklahoman though it may be, the Minneapple (or pumpkin) pie sounds perfectly delicious and gets our wholehearted endorsement.

While you'd expect the Dairy State's fair foods to be on the cheesy side, new offerings for the 2022 Wisconsin State Fair are tilted heavily toward the wackier end of the spectrum. Among the not-so-appetizing items on the menu are the Bug Apple On-a-Stick (a chocolate-coated apple dipped in ants, crickets, June bugs, and worms), the Arctic Bug Blast (a slushie with edible bugs), and the Gummy Bear Brat (a sausage not only topped but also infused with colorful gummy bears). Quelle surprise, none of these foods is competing for the coveted Sporkies award. The finalists for best fair food, as determined by a panel of judges, include trendy items like a Cinnamon Toast Crunch latte and Flamin' Hot Cheetos-dusted chicken tenders, along with couldn't-be-more-Wisconsin foods such as deep-fried beer brats with cheese curds.

Our favorite of the Sporkies contestants is a treat that pays homage to Wisconsin's favorite cocktail, the brandy old fashioned (which is nothing like your grandpa's old fashioned unless gramps was from Sheboygan). The brandy old fashioned s'more is made from whipped cream and graham crackers covered in milk and white chocolate, then garnished, in the Wisconsin old fashioned tradition, with an orange slice and a cherry. And yes, the candy even comes on a stick! Best of all, this s'more comes from Freese's, a candy store that's been located just blocks from the Wisconsin State Fairgrounds for over 90 years.