A basket of deep-fried bull testicles at the Dundas Testicle Festival. (Eating Normal)
DUNDAS, WI (WTAQ) — In Seymour, Wisconsin, they have burgers. In Door County, they have cherries. And in the small unincorporated Calumet County town of Dundas, they have cow testicles.
And that’s no bull.
“It’s bikes, music, nuts, and fun. It’s a good time,” says Tara Erickson, co-owner of Rocky and Tara’s Nut Haus, one of the two bars that puts on the event every year.
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The history of eating bull testicles in Dundas every May doesn’t start in any sort of folksy way. It’s not a local tradition with hundreds of years of history behind it. Linda Fassbender, the owner of Two of a Kind, the other bar that puts on the event, will tell you exactly what it is if you ask.
“It’s the best gimmick in the world, right?” asked Fassbender. “They come.”
It’s been done in Dundas for nearly 30 years. The current owners have been involved since 1997, but what was two separate parties in previous years has become a huge one, with hundreds flocking in.
“It used to be separated between the two bars,” Erickson said. “But then her and I became the bar owners.”
“We’re friends, and we get along,” added Fassbender.
So it became what it is today: a huge block party taking up essentially all of downtown Dundas. Not only is there plenty of beer, plenty of music, and plenty of bull testicles but the testicles are all you can eat with the cover charge.
“Everybody loves the nuts, and they’re free,” said Erickson.
They go through a lot of them, too. 300 pounds, in fact, per year. Ken Seif is the man on the deep fryer.
“The testicles are breaded and sliced before I get them,” Seif told WTAQ. “They put them in hotel pans and we put them into a fryer to get them to a nice golden brown.”
But how do they taste?
“Like a chewier chicken nugget. With ranch, they’re awesome,” said Rocky Erickson, Tara’s Husband.
“To me you taste the deep fry, you don’t really get a lot of flavor from the testicle,” said Lori, Darboy.
“It tastes like nuts!” chimed in Tim of New London.
“It kind of tastes like a chicken tender,” said Madison, from Oshkosh. “Like a dark meat chicken tender.”
It hasn’t always been the kind of testicles-to-the-walls good times for organizers. Last year, they had issues. Like baby formula, diesel gasoline, Playstation 5, and used cars, ongoing supply chain issues also have had an impact on the cow testicle market.
Ken Seif prepares deep-fried bull testicles as the Dundas Testicle Festival. (Eating Normal)
“We had our first concern that we might need to have our first testicle-free Testicle Festival,” Tara Erickson explained. “Because it was going to be that limited, but we decided we either needed to go balls to the wall or none at all.”
This year, they had plenty, and while Rocky says less than half of festival goers try the, uh, delicacy–opting instead to dine at one of the food trucks that line up at the event–the ones that do are nuts for them.
“This is my fourth or fifth tray, and I’m going to get between eight and 17 more,” said one Appleton festivalgoer. “I like them covered in hot sauce and ranch.”
I tried a pair of trays myself and I’ll tell you, the testicle enthusiasts of Dundas aren’t nuts.
They really do kind of taste like Chicken.
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