My top secret for keeping your tailgate party food hot was revealed yesterday, but today I want to cook my football food right in the parking lot. With a portable camper saute burner rather than a small charcoal grill, I’ll demonstrate how to cook Beer Shrimp Scampi saute from Carter/Finley Stadium in Raleigh, North Carolina.

If you’ve been following my videos over the past two years, you know how I feel about outdoor grilling. It’s the great male excuse. If you’re trying to learn to cook, and were to cook a steak on your indoor stove top to a black char, it would be unacceptable. However, if you cook a steak outdoors, on a barbeque grill, and it’s charred black, it’s “nicely blackened”. Burnt is burnt, indoors or out. I don’t know why men think it’s easier to cook outdoors than indoors. I believe the exact opposite.

If the outdoor barbeque grill you have at home is for natural charcoal, it’s the most difficult heat in your house to apply consistently. If your grill is propane gas, it’s hard to learn how to barbeque grill because it’s probably the hottest element you have in your home.

Since controlling heat is the key to cooking, the barbeque grill is the most volatile cooking element you have at your disposal. You can compound this cooking challenge by trying to use a portable barbeque grill. The smaller grills are even harder to control, and more difficult to get even heat.

The most reliable source of heat will be direct, conductive heat as applied in basic saute. Bringing a portable camper stove and saute pan to your next tailgate party gives much greater variety in cooking. You can heat a saute pan more evenly, apply fats and compound flavors better than a barbeque grill, and deglaze the pan with liquids to make pan sauces. Your tailgate party saute will have more moisture and flavor than the 2 hour old grilled hot dog.

I’d rather saute any day. Whether at home, indoors, or in the parking lot preparing my football food for the tailgate party, the direct heat of a saute pan is easier to control and gives me greater options than a barbeque grill can.

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