North Carolina is the house of many widespread meals – barbecue, Pepsi – however additionally it is the house to uncommon food-related occasions and festivals!
Take a look at this record of the offbeat North Carolina meals festivals and occasions.
Abundance NC’s Pepper Fest
For the previous 15 years, this competition has celebrated regionally grown peppers!
This Pittsboro occasion attracts about 1,000 individuals to the realm each September and options meals ready with the recent peppers. Every part from a gentle stuffed pepper to Ghost Pepper Lemonade is on the menu!
The occasion additionally consists of reside music, performances and a youngsters’s zone with cooking courses and pepper arts and crafts.
Ayden Collard Pageant
For almost 50 years, collards have been the star of the annual Ayden Collard Pageant. The occasion celebrates collards with a collard consuming contest. Bum’s Restaurant has provided the collards for this competitors for greater than 40 years. There’s a ladies’s and males’s division.
The one rule is that entrants have half-hour and must eat every pound of collards fully. Something could also be added to them whereas consuming them. Whoever eats probably the most collards and holds them down will win $100. Contestants should be no less than 18 years of age.
The competition additionally contains a parade and reside music.
BugFest on the NC Museum of Pure Sciences
Each fall, the North Carolina Museum of Pure Sciences hosts this occasion, which celebrates bugs with interactive displays and shows. You may even pattern some meals that includes bugs! The occasion attracts 1000’s of tourists and permits youngsters to see bugs together with tiny honey bees up shut.
The competition and museum are free to attend.
The 2022 occasion centered on centipedes, whereas the 2023 occasion will probably be all about spiders!
Unique Meat Month at Bull Metropolis Burger and Brewery
Each spring, this Durham restaurant affords particular unique meat choices on its menu. Every part from camel and tarantula burgers to scorpion cocktails are featured.
The promotion celebrates the restaurant and brewery’s anniversary by serving burgers constituted of meats eaten across the globe.
The burgers provided on the menu in the course of the promotion embody alligator, iguana, python, bison and turtle, amongst others.
Mush, Music and Mutts – Official State Fall Liver Mush Pageant
Livermush is a well-liked western North Carolina dish accommodates pig liver puree blended with cornmeal and spices. It’s thick sufficient to be sliced, which differentiates it from liver pudding or paté.
The dish is so widespread in some counties that it has two festivals in North Carolina.
The autumn occasion is held in Shelby, NC.
Mush, Music and Mutts, the official state liver mush competition, is held each fall. (Whereas Southern Residing and different authoritiative sources say the dish is one phrase, the competition makes use of two.)
There, you possibly can take pleasure in “freshly ready liver mush sandwiches” along with a livermush consuming contest, reside music, pet costume contest and parade, livermush recipe contest and Little Miss Liver Mush pageant, based on the Uptown Shelby Affiliation web site.
The Marion Livermush Pageant – Official State Spring Livermush Pageant
Livermush is so widespread it will get two festivals in North Carolina.
The official spring Livermush Pageant is held in Marion, NC. It contains a livermush meals truck rodeo, reside music, inflatables and a youngsters’s zone.
There are additionally pig calling and pig squealing contests.
This competition is about 15 years previous.
North Carolina Poultry Jubilee
The city of Rose Hill, NC, is residence to the “World’s Largest Frying Pan.” It’s also residence to hen producer Home of Raeford Farms. It is just becoming that yearly they use the large pan to fry tons of hen. The NC Poultry Jubilee additionally consists of carnival rides, reside music and a hen wing-eating competitors.
North Carolina Scorching Sauce Contest and Pageant
In Oxford each fall, issues get sizzling and spicy at this annual occasion! There’s a selfmade sizzling sauce contest, and a pepper-eating contest. Plus, get pleasure from reside music, a youngsters’s space and basic automobile present.
The annual occasion attracts as much as 20,000 individuals to downtown Oxford, based on the competition web site.
It began when native enterprise proprietor Julia Stovall Overton hosted an occasion selling North Carolina-made sizzling sauces. The occasion grew to cowl 16 metropolis blocks. Overton retired in 2019, and the principle occasion stage was named after her.
The occasion even prompted the North Carolina Common Meeting in 2009 to undertake the 2nd Saturday in September as North Carolina Scorching Sauce Day.
