‘Today Show’ features ‘Pittsburgh pepperoni roll’ recipe, a knock-off the West Virginia classic

CLARKSBURG, W.Va. (WBOY) — NBC's "Today Show" shared a recipe on Friday for the perfect "crowd-pleaser" game day snack, but a few things about it might have West Virginians scratching their heads.

Pepperoni rolls were invented by the wives of Italian West Virginia coal miners who needed a simple and transportable lunch to send into the mines. But in a Steelers vs. Jets recipe cookoff, the Pittsburgh Steelers' representative made what he called "Pittsburgh pepperoni balls," a variation of the official state food of West Virginia .

The pepperoni roll recipe featured all the needed ingredients—pizza dough, mozzarella cheese and your favorite pepperoni—but has a whole second recipe for something most West Virginians would deem unnecessary: A dipping sauce.

Every West Virginia Italian restaurant and family has a slightly different variation of the pepperoni roll, and a few, like Apple Annie's and the Pepperoni Roll Bar in Morgantown , do split the rolls open and add sauce and toppings. However, most West Virginians would agree that a marinara dipping sauce isn't part of the usual pepperoni roll experience; how would you possibly transport a dipping sauce into a coal mine?

Are pepperoni rolls really illegal to sell outside West Virginia?

Maybe the sauce is added because the recipe uses pepperoni roll and "pizza roll" interchangeably, but no West Virginian would ever compare classic dish to the frozen Totino's pods we call pizza rolls.

The recipe also drizzles hot honey over the rolls after they are baked, another step that most West Virginians would deem not needed.

And for West Virginians who feel passionately about the sliced, stick or ground pepperoni debate when it comes to your pepperoni rolls, the Today recipe calls for two packages of your favorite "coarsely diced" pepperoni—whatever that means.

West Virginians are not slow to put anyone who defaces a pepperoni roll on blast. In 2023, a West Virginia church called out the sports broadcast team during the Duke's Mayo Bowl for putting mayo on a pepperoni roll , calling it a "heinous act," a "mortal sin" and an "abomination in the eyes of The Lord."

Maybe it's because non-West Virginians think of a pepperoni roll as a type of sandwich, a classification that most West Virginians disagree with .