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The Practical Tailgater
In the past few newsletters we've dealt with the workhorses of the family grill, chicken, burgers and brats. Now it's tailgate season - football, soccer and the like, and it's time to take the show on the road.
The challenges of providing hot food on a cold day out of the back of your car to a hungry crowd are many - no work space / counter top, no sink, few kitchen tools, and shrimpy, often underpowered cooking stoves or grills.
The place to start when choosing your menu, is your cooking rig, whether it be a charcoal or gas grill, a table top gas grill, a Coleman stove, or a cajun cooker (a 75,000 BTU jet engine set under a heavy cast steel grate, capable of deep frying a 20 pound turkey in 17 seconds - & my personal favorite).
And the questions to ask yourself are how powerful is my rig and how big (capacity). High power is always better because it compensates for heat loss due to the weather - wind, cold and the like, and because it can heat / cook faster which effectively increases capacity.
Size also matters (surprise!), the bigger the rig, the greater the capacity, the bigger the crowd you can feed and /or the faster you can feed them.
If you're going to use a stove - easy to transport, set up, fire up and break down, then you want to think about menu items that are liquid based such as chili, soup and gumbo. Put it in a pot, heat and serve on the stove. Easy.
If you're going to use a grill - harder to transport but great for gathering around to stay warm, then you can grill that burger or brat and you can throw that pot of chili or gumbo on. Flexible.
The base strategy to overcome the lack of a kitchen and its amenities in the field is not to cook in the field, but simply to reheat. Cook at home with all your resources and bring the food ready to go.
You'll serve the food faster, you'll reduce the impact of cold, breezy weather in cooking food to doneness, both of which lead to less stress and more chatting around the fire with your friends.
Here's some other tips for making your tailgate rock.
- If you're cooking burgers, brats, chicken and such on site, start cooking early and build up an "inventory" so when the rush starts you don't run out of food half way through.
- If you do a sandwich, choose a durable bread like french bread, that won't squish easily, is more filling and won't dry out in a breeze.
- If you do a sandwich, bring the condiments separately to keep the bread from getting soggy and to let people customize.
- Heat your chili, stew or whatever at home and wrap the pot in a blanket and set it in a cardboard box. It'll stay hot, stay upright and stable, the box can be converted to the trash box and the blanket can then keep you warm
- If you anticipate cold and wind, bring an old blanket to partially lay across the lid of the grill to keep the heat in.
- Cheat, call KT's, we'll do the work for you and with the newsletter deal ($5 a head) it won't cost much more than doing it yourself:)
By the way, I've got a killer smoked sausage and chicken gumbo recipe. If you're interested click here and request it and I'll send it right out.
Kirk
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