Apple-Scrapple English Muffin goes viral with Abbotts chef's entry

Scrapple has been getting a lot of attention lately as the Apple-Scrapple English Muffin, created by Abbotts on Broad Creek Chef/Owner Ryan Cunningham, moves through the final rounds of Thomas' Hometown Breakfast Battle.

As one of 135 chefs approached by the company to create a breakfast recipe using Thomas' English Muffins or bagels to celebrate the company's 135th year in business, Cunningham said he went local and kept it true to Delaware hometown breakfast roots by creating an Apple-Scrapple English Muffin with local apples, farm eggs and scrapple from Haass' Family Butcher Shop in Dover.

Now, the local chef, a Lewes native, has made it to the quarterfinals, competing against seven other chefs across the nation to take $25,000 and bragging rights in a breakfast battle that has gone viral with #goscrapple photos on Facebook and Instagram.

"Most of the country doesn’t know what scrapple is," Cunningham said. "But everybody loves it here - everybody who was born and raised here anyway."

A pork-based breakfast meat, scrapple is made from the scraps and trimmings left over from butchering a pig and boiled down to form a mush which is then mixed with cornmeal, wheat flour and spices. It comes refrigerated in a brownish-gray loaf, which is then sliced and fried for service.

Often considered an ethnic food of the Pennsylvania Dutch, scrapple is mostly known in rural areas of the mid-Atlantic, including Delaware, Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Virginia.

This weekend, the Apple Scrapple English Muffin will be getting a boost from the 24th Annual Apple Scrapple Festival in Bridgeville, where Cunningham said he will be promoting his breakfast sandwich and some of his other locally-sourced Delaware favorites at Abbotts.

"The response has just been overwhelming, and it’s unbelieveable how this isn’t really about me anymore," Cunningham said. "I’m just the representative; it’s all about Delaware and scrapple and putting us on the national map."

To vote for Cunningham's Apple Scrapple English muffin, go to thomasbreakfastbattle.com and register then return to vote once daily through October 25.