Hey. It’s A Friday Filler Post By Alex!
May 15, 2020
By Alex Zeese
On Wednesday Steve texted me to say that we were short on content for Friday and asked me to come up with a topic. Short on time and with a lack of obvious topics I was desperate to come up with “SOMETHING”. Tampa had just done a uniform article a few weeks ago so it’s too soon for me to touch on that, and there’s no stadium news, so that basically takes out my two favorite things to write about. But then it came to me: one thing everyone loves to talk about is food, particularly favorite foods for football games. So I thought I’d take a moment here and rank my top football foods of all time.
5. Crab Dip
This is a new one for me personally but it’s shot up my rankings quickly. I finally found a good crab dip recipe and after making it for a few games last season, and it’s now a go-to item for me. I’d probably make it every week if it wasn’t so expensive; real crab isn’t cheap. If you make it right, that gooey, cheesy creamy hot dip with chunks of crab mixed throughout is an excellent side dish to have for when friends come over to watch the Skins game…or when you’re alone. I’m not gonna judge you.
4. Brats
This is probably the only item up here that’s as good in the stadium as it in your house. Brats are always high up on my list because they are easy to make, and if it’s Sunday and maybe I haven’t figured out what I want to eat by the time the game was about to come on I could get them cooking quickly. Sauté onion and pepper, brown the sausage then add some beer and cover till it’s cooked. Also, you’re cooking with beer and that’s fun.
3. Pizza
Okay, you may be thinking that by putting pizza on the list I’m phoning it in on this ranking. And you are right, but literally who doesn’t love to call up, order a pizza and then just not have to worry? Washington isn’t any kind of pizza mecca by any stretch, but we have a few decent local places, regional chains, and stand-alone ships that pepper this region, and I’ll always try and go with those boys rather than any of the big three. A gripe about one of the local chains – Paisano’s, your pizza is great but that TV ad last year with Ryan Kerrigan is terrible! It’s cheesy and not in a good way, like your pies.
2. Buffalo Wings
Buffalo wings seemed to take over America, and now we all can’t stop eating them. I think it combines everything guys love about guy food – it’s spicy, a little messy, has bones and no vegetables. Last year I got really into making my own wings at home on the smoker. If you have a smoker or know how to smoke on the grill it really isn’t hard to smoke up your own wings, but here’s my tip for you: just before serving them fill a pan with just a little bit of vegetable oil and do a light fry up on the outside. It just gets that skin nice and crispy like a traditional buffalo wing.
1. Chili
Nothing says football season more than a nice bowl of chili. There’s nothing better than chili on a game day because you can do so many things with it, such as serving it over pasta or rice, covering it in cheese, turning it into a dip for chips, chili Frito pie, chili mac, or even just straight up. The best part is that you can never make just 1 bowl and can never eat just one bowl.
My dad taught me how to make chili when I was about 10 years old, and we would do it before watching most Redskins games. His was simple chili, with diced and sautéed bell peppers, onion, garlic, and ground beef. He finished up with a giant can of crushed tomato, a can of red beans, and what seemed to me at the time to be an absurd amount of chili powder. Then we just let it simmer until we were ready to eat. Dad, being from the north-east, always served it over rice with a big pile of shredded cheese on top.
I’ve evolved quite a bit in my chili making on game days. In college I started experimenting with adding in different kinds of meat, including sausage, and steak, and I even tried taking jerky and re-hydrating it then mixing that into the vat. I went veggie-heavy for awhile, adding mushrooms, carrots, celery.
But now as I’ve gotten older and wiser I’ve stuck to the simple. I try to always add some smoked beef of some kind, whatever big chunk of red meat I can get at the store. I smoke it for an hour or two, just enough to get that wood flavor, and then dice it up to put in the chili, along with some ground beef, for a variety of texture. Secondly, now I absolutely must have several types of fresh and dried peppers. Ancho and chipotle are must add flavors. If you can get some Hatch chilies to chop up in there, even better. Mix that all up with onions, garlic, and whatever chili seasonings you like – it can’t go wrong.
So there you go. My top five football foods. If you have something you like to gnaw on, let me know.